Practice Smart
Here are a few tips from Benedetti on getting the most out of your practice time:

“Give yourself a fail-safe position by practicing more often for less time. You can accomplish more in two 15-minute practice sessions than you can in one 30-minute session.

“Concentrate on finding interesting things in the real basics of your own playing: tone production, shifting, vibrato, and, especially, relaxation.”

“Look at your hands in the mirror to see if they look natural [on the instrument and bow], then rearrange them if necessary.”

“Don’t worry about occasionally being too hard on yourself. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is also very important to sit back and see what you have achieved.”

Although Benedetti is still in many ways a student, she believes deeply in giving back to the educational system, which has been her benefactor. Last year, she toured with the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra, and visited schools in both Scotland and England for the Sargent Cancer Care Practice-a-thon.

But it’s not only musicians her own age she enjoys working with.

“I’ve been to many schools,” she says, “and sometimes it’s a more exciting experience when the class is of non-music students. I’ll never forget one school where there was hardly any music education. I was warned that the 16 year olds I would be talking to and playing for might not be receptive. Instead, the silence when I played showed me how deeply the music made them feel, because their ears were 100 percent open.”