Jun 2, 2026 · 53 min · 13 segments
In this episode, violinist, author, and all-around thoughtful human Vijay Gupta joins the show for a wide-ranging chat about performance, humanity, and why musicians might need to spend less time…
Vijay GuptaGuestRobert BosworthHost
For the last six years I've been working on my first book, which is called "Restrung," and it's a book that's about encountering Skid Row for the first time.
Um, at, at the time I was a member of the LA Philharmonic and, um, my parents had wanted me to be a doctor.
I actually was asking this, this question where, you know, does the world need yet another conservatory-trained violinist playing on stage at Walt Disney Concert Hall or the Hollywood Bowl when there are 11,000 people sleeping on the streets of downtown Los Angeles? And so I started cold calling shelters and clinics and county jails, and what I learned about not just the music, but what I learned about myself, um, took my breath away.
It completely made me come undone and then eventually became the place where I realized that I was grappling with my own addictions, not only to food and alcohol, but also addictions to success and validation and everyone else's version of perfect that didn't serve the music, didn't serve me, and didn't serve the audiences who I was playing for in Skid Row and county jails and, and, uh, asylums, um, who seemed to understand the music we played with so much more emotional acuity and honesty than I was experiencing in the concert hall.
I think it's one of the last bastions of temples of silence where we can actually understand that silence is the canvas on which we actually get to make music.
And making music in a cons- uh, make- making music in a shelter or a clinic kind of reminded me why I ever became a musician in the first place, that what we get to do is share an energetic connection with a human being that is fleeting and imperfect and utterly precious.
So this is a book about all of that, um, and it's called "Restrung" because it's based on a quote of a poet, a Bengali poet named Rabindranath Tagore, and the poem is that, "I have spent my life stringing and unstringing my instrument, but the song I came to sing remains unsung." So "Restrung" is the song I came to sing, and it's dedicated to the memory of my dad, who passed away in 2017.
And so writing this book is also coming to grips with the fact that I was raised in a world created by his dreams and his nightmares, and realizing that my own life actually had to be returning those dreams and nightmares back to him and living the life that I had created for myself.
I'm, I'm curious, uh, if every time you step foot in a jail to play music, you're reminded of your school experience.
Um, where to go from there? Let's ta- Okay, so when did your first, uh, ventures into a place like a county jail start? Was there...
For the last six years I've been working on my first book, which is called "Restrung," and it's a book that's about encountering Skid Row for the first time.
Um, at, at the time I was a member of the LA Philharmonic and, um, my parents had wanted me to be a doctor.
I actually was asking this, this question where, you know, does the world need yet another conservatory-trained violinist playing on stage at Walt Disney Concert Hall or the Hollywood Bowl when there are 11,000 people sleeping on the streets of downtown Los Angeles? And so I started cold calling shelters and clinics and county jails, and what I learned about not just the music, but what I learned about myself, um, took my breath away.
It completely made me come undone and then eventually became the place where I realized that I was grappling with my own addictions, not only to food and alcohol, but also addictions to success and validation and everyone else's version of perfect that didn't serve the music, didn't serve me, and didn't serve the audiences who I was playing for in Skid Row and county jails and, and, uh, asylums, um, who seemed to understand the music we played with so much more emotional acuity and honesty than I was experiencing in the concert hall.
I think it's one of the last bastions of temples of silence where we can actually understand that silence is the canvas on which we actually get to make music.
And making music in a cons- uh, make- making music in a shelter or a clinic kind of reminded me why I ever became a musician in the first place, that what we get to do is share an energetic connection with a human being that is fleeting and imperfect and utterly precious.
So this is a book about all of that, um, and it's called "Restrung" because it's based on a quote of a poet, a Bengali poet named Rabindranath Tagore, and the poem is that, "I have spent my life stringing and unstringing my instrument, but the song I came to sing remains unsung." So "Restrung" is the song I came to sing, and it's dedicated to the memory of my dad, who passed away in 2017.
And so writing this book is also coming to grips with the fact that I was raised in a world created by his dreams and his nightmares, and realizing that my own life actually had to be returning those dreams and nightmares back to him and living the life that I had created for myself.
I'm, I'm curious, uh, if every time you step foot in a jail to play music, you're reminded of your school experience.
Um, where to go from there? Let's ta- Okay, so when did your first, uh, ventures into a place like a county jail start? Was there...
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