Page 68 - Virtual Benedetti Sessions Coverage Book
P. 68
4 May 2020
INTERVIEW
Nicola Benedetti: why everyone’s
welcome in my shutdown sessions
The violinist Nicola Benedetti isn’t taking a break in lockdown. She tells
Richard Morrison about her online workshops for all ages and talents
Nicola Benedetti: “I haven’t stopped performing, rehearsing or travelling since I was 15”
Richard Morrison
Monday May 04 2020, 12.01am, The Times
It seems a lifetime ago, but it was actually only last November that Nicola Benedetti met me
at some ungodly morning hour in a west London café, plonked several double espressos in front
of us and talked me through something that had been obsessing her, she said, for the past 17
years. Since the Scottish violinist is only 32 now, that sounded alarming.
It turned out to be not alarming, simply jaw-dropping. It was, in her words, “a way to make an
impact on as many people as possible with something I have a deep belief in — namely the
power of music”.
A year earlier she had launched the Benedetti Foundation to raise money for an extraordinary
educational project. Benedetti would recruit dozens of like-minded performers and music
teachers, people committed to raising the profile and quality of music education.
67
