When people make things look effortless, that's when you know they're really good.

You know, when they make it look easy.

- Oh, she's so intense.

The greatest classical guitar player in the world.

- Sharon's father promised her that if she practiced guitar for an hour, she could go outside and launch her model rockets.

- Living upstairs from her is a nightmare.

It's... the worst part is... it's the flamenco dancing.

- When I first heard Sharon, I was blown away by things she could do that I had never heard another guitarist do.

- She's really the face of classical guitar these days.

- There's thousands of little girls out there who've seen Sharon who now know that that's open to them.

That's huge.

- If you should Google the words, "classical guitar female," one name-- Sharon Isbin.

She's here with us tonight.

(cheers and applause) - I never set out to conquer the world.

I just wanted to be the best player I could possibly be, and all these great things happened along the way that I could never have predicted.

- Sharon Isbin is certainly as good a guitarist as I've ever heard, and better than nearly all of them.

But she isn't like anybody else.

I mean, she found her own road.

- Intense, gifted, unique.

Sharon Isbin is all of these and more.

As the world's premier classical guitarist, she has inspired new appreciation of an instrument and repertoire that had become almost invisible.

- She's brought a whole new horizon to the instrument, and therefore to the understanding of how important it is as a member of the musical family.

- With many concerts each year, and 25 recordings to her credit, Sharon has successfully campaigned to keep the guitar performance and repertoire front and center.

- And the Grammy goes to... Sharon Isbin for Dreams of a World.

- When she got her first Grammy in 2001, Sharon was the first classical guitarist in 28 years to win.

- I'm deeply honored and humbled by this, and thank you so much for the award.

My life changed after that point.

And it really just opens a lot of doors.

It makes it a lot easier for people to know who you are and that you mean business.

- So how did a shy young woman from Minnesota become a triumphant firebrand in a foreign musical arena that had been the exclusive domain of men?

- Sharon has made us listen to the guitar in a new way.

She's brought a sensitivity and an intensity.

And I think that her gender is part of her significance as a groundbreaking artist.

(applause) - By 2009, even fans in the White House were inviting Sharon for command performances.

- Well, hello.

(laughter) Good afternoon.

Welcome to the White House.

- When I first got the invitation, I was thrilled to be able to be given this opportunity to contribute to the importance of classical music being recognized.

It was a very intimate experience.

And I felt like I was in their living room, which I basically was.

It's amazing to be able to put all your work, your love, your passion into something you really believe in.

To have the acclaim and the approval, it's really something very, very special.

(applause) - Sharon grew up in Minneapolis, the third of four children born to Catherine and Herbert Isbin.

- One of the things that was helpful in my growing up is that I had two older brothers.

Because they could do whatever they wanted to do, and they were older, I figured I should have all the same privileges.

As a girl in those days, in the '60s, that wasn't something to take for granted.

And I decided that if I wanted to be doing sports, if I wanted to do science, that was something I would pursue.

And I knew right away as a kid that I would always have a career.

I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was going to be something.

- Although she had begun piano lessons at an early age, Sharon showed no early musical prowess.

When she was nine years old, Sharon's father, a scientist, was offered a one-year consulting job in Italy and took the family with him.

It was in Italy during this one-year sabbatical that Sharon, by accident, discovered the guitar.

- I started by default.

My older brother Ira said he wanted guitar lessons.

So my parents found a teacher, and Ira went in for the interview and saw the guy's long nails on his right hand, and that he'd have to practice classical music.

He said, "Absolutely not-- I want to be Elvis Presley."

I volunteered to take his place.

So I really began by default.

I had an instrument custom made.

I was a little kid, so they had to measure my hands.

Just to know that it was something personal, it was mine, I wasn't sharing it with other little kids, like a piano, it was something that I would cradle and caress.

The way you hold the guitar, it becomes part of you, and you can feel the vibrations.

I was a bit of a shy kid, so being able to play an instrument that wasn't loud and bombastic, it really was something that expressed my own feelings.

We moved back to Minneapolis when I was ten.

I became really interested in science, so guitar really wasn't to figure largely for quite a while.

I got involved with model rockets, launching my rockets and watching the grasshoppers get smashed up in the plastic capsules.

I used to spend all my time building them.

My father used to get me to practice by saying, "If you don't put an hour in on the guitar, you can't launch your rockets."

That was really going to be my direction-- a rocket scientist, a brain surgeon, something along those lines.

And my parents were always really great about letting me just follow my passion, whatever it was at the moment.

I was a very serious kid.

As a teenager, I don't remember being terribly lighthearted about things.

I'll demonstrate some different techniques that can be achieved with the guitar.

One is called the tremolo, where you use the first three fingers.

That focus, that problem solving that I got from science, lent itself very well to guitar, because I had to spend the hours to really get better at it.

When I was 14, I had a light switch moment.

I won a competition.

The award was to play for 10,000 people with the Minnesota Orchestra as soloist.

I was just exhilarated by the feeling of walking out onstage, seeing thousands, literally thousands of people.

I realized this is even more exciting than launching my worms and grasshoppers into space, and, "I think I'm going to become a guitarist."

It was literally an overnight thing.

My father took me to meet a colleague of Segovia.

His name was Sophocles Pappas.

And Pappas was appalled when he learned I was only putting in an hour a day, and that I didn't practice scales, and I barely knew what a phrase was.

So he really made me learn the discipline that's involved in becoming a musician.

It's not just fun.

I ended up practicing five hours a day.

When you're not serious about something, it feels easy.

But then when you really buckle down and you decide this is going to be your life's work, then it... the whole picture changes.

And in my case, I wasn't one of those people who would just pop out of the womb and play.

I had to really work hard and find every performance opportunity I could and really make myself into a guitarist.

- A couple of years later, she entered the Young Artists Competition, also sponsored by the Minnesota Orchestra, and was told she couldn't enter because the guitar was not an orchestral instrument.

- When the head of the jury, who was the concertmaster of the orchestra, got wind that I was going to be banished, he said, "I'm not going to judge-- I'll withdraw."

So enough pressure was put on the administration to allow me to enter, and then when I won, it was a vindication for the instrument.

There's always a duality with this instrument, and being a woman playing it.

In the guitar world, I always had to fight as a woman.

And in the music world, I always had to fight as a guitarist.

- The Minnesota victory was just the kind of motivation Sharon needed.

In seemingly no time at all, she was winning international music competitions, and with help from her brother Neil, headlining a concert at his alma mater, Rice University.

- As a result of that experience, the orchestra conductor there, who was from Germany, said, "Would you like to do a tour of Germany?"

I didn't even know what a tour was, really, or what it meant.

But I said yes.

And that was amazing, because I started at that young age to travel all over Europe.

It really changed me.

It gave me a sense of what it would be like to be a concert artist.

And I think it really solidified my desire and my ambition to pursue that dream.

I've certainly been inspired by the grandfather of guitar.

- Segovia brought the guitar, made the guitar what it is today-- just put the guitar on the classical stage pedestal.

- I had the fortune of having lessons with him when I was a kid.

- Really?

How old were you?

(laughter) - I was a very young teenager.

- Were you?

- I was 14, actually, when I first started.

- So were you just completely stunned and intimidated?

- Yes.

- Good.

- The first time I played for him, my guitar was bouncing off my chest, my heart was beating so hard.

The thing that I will always remember was being up close when he would demonstrate something on the guitar.

And I would be able to hear that gorgeous gemlike sound that he produced.

- Segovia made a lot of transcriptions of music that was written for other instruments.

Just as he had gone after Villa-Lobos and various other figures to write for guitar, Sharon has done the same thing.

- As a guitarist, I was always aware that it was an instrument that had to catch up.

It was newer in the world.

We didn't have Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven.

I always felt like I want more.

I want more to play.

- When Sharon was a senior in high school, she boldly approached Israeli composer Ami Maayani, who had just written a harp concerto.

- As soon as I heard harp, I thought, "Guitar.

"This guy can write for the plucked instrument.

I'll ask him to write a concerto."

I didn't think about it-- I just did it.

And his first answer was, "No, what a silly, stupid instrument.

I'm not going to write for that."

- Sharon simply would not take no for an answer.

She just knew he was the right composer for the job.

So she tirelessly pursued Maayani for months.

Her persistence paid off.

Sharon was only 21 when she premiered, in Israel, the Maayani guitar concerto written especially for her.

- I think there's always a fearless component to being a musician.

You have to believe in yourself, and I think I always did.

To ask a composer to write for me, what's the worst that can happen?

They say no.

Okay, then you move on.

And that was my first premiere.

And I learned an incredible lesson, which was that "No" just means try harder.

(applause) - I often wonder why more women didn't get into the classical aspect of music the way that Sharon did.

I think it was just a question of the times, and we weren't forced into doing it.

But I think it was a magnificent choice for her, and she does it so magnificently well.

- While Sharon was an undergraduate at Yale, her passion for her craft grew.

So did her ambition to broaden the repertoire.

She wanted to find classical pieces that could be reconceived for the guitar.

- She got very interested in Bach, who didn't write anything for the guitar, because the guitar didn't exist yet in the form in which she plays it.

And so she went to a leading figure in the Bach world to figure out how to do this.

- Sharon got in touch with renowned pianist Rosalyn Tureck.

- Her phone number was listed in the phone book.

I literally called her up.

- Rosalyn Tureck was a very great Bach player who figured out how to do things on the piano that nobody had figured out how to do before.

- Although Tureck was not a guitarist, she agreed to take Sharon as a student.

That led to a ten-year collaboration adapting suites Bach wrote for the lute to the guitar.

- We have a real master from outside the world of the guitar in Rosalyn Tureck giving her ears and her philosophies on Bach, and then combining that with what Sharon has been able to do on the instrument.

We have these wonderful gems of transcriptions now that really expands beyond the typical way that a guitarist would think about that music.

- We ended up spending an entire year on that suite.

Every time I thought, "Okay, now we're ready to move on to something else," she would say, "Now we're ready to move on to the next level."

I really learned what it meant to go deeper and deeper into something until you really feel you've begun to understand it and to express it.

- Although the Bach transcriptions fulfilled one dream, Sharon still hungered for new works.

She was now a visible player on the glamorous New York music scene, rubbing elbows professionally and socially with highly regarded contemporary performers and composers.

Sharon was determined to get as many composers as she could to write for her.

- She called me and she said, "I'm a guitarist, and I would "like you to think about writing a piece for me and Carol Wincenc, the flutist."

And I said, "Actually, I don't think so."

And she was, like, stunned by this answer.

And she said, "Why?"

I said, "Well, because I don't understand the guitar."

And she said, "Oh.

Well, that's... all composers give me that reaction."

And so I called her back finally and I said, "Yes, I will do this, and basically because you two guys are such wonderful musicians."

I started writing the piece.

It was called Snow Dreams.

The whole thing of writing for guitar is so challenging, because it's not like winds or strings or piano.

It's just not.

The way the fingers work and the way the frets are placed, and you have to know how these fingers cooperate together, it's such a fragile instrument.

It needs to be totally Mozartian, almost.

And she has that in spades.

- I can't remember a formal meeting date.

- I met him by chance at a New Year's Eve party.

- Yeah.

See, what I want you to do is to play it... if you could play it, like, from... - The most famous of the pieces she has commissioned or the one she's probably played the most often, is by John Corigliano, and it's called Troubadour.

- Sharon must have come over to me.

I know Sharon.

She must have come over to me at a party and said, "Hi, I'm Sharon Isbin, I want a concerto."

- What I said was, "Would you consider writing a piece for me?"

- I didn't want to write a guitar concerto.

- And he said, "It's a great idea.

"I'm a little busy right now.

Call me next year."

- She persisted.

- Year after year after... eight years.

- She says eight.

I think it was, like, ten years.

I knew absolutely nothing about the guitar excepting that it had six strings and that you plucked it with your finger.

Really loud.

I had good reason to say no.

- I said, "How am I going to get this guy to write for me?"

So sad here.

And I suddenly thought, "Why not the French troubadours?

I will be the troubadour."

- So I listened to troubadour music, and I found things about it that I could adopt into a set of variations, concerto.

I would say that Sharon is the most meticulous soloist I've ever had.

If I write a diminuendo and it goes to a note, and there's a dynamic there, she will be there at that dynamic, and she won't be there the note before or the note after.

She really studies a score.

- Okay, I have a little suggestion.

- Yeah.

- I like the (imitates scraping sound) I like this.

- What do I think of when I do that?

What is that coming from?

Whenever I'm working with a composer, and they're writing something new I've never heard before, it's a gamble.

You don't know what's going to happen.

You don't know if you're even going to like it.

(vocalizing sound in context) - So a whistle.

- Yeah, like a whistle.

- A whistle.

- I think I like that.

- I'm facing this enormous mountain of challenges.

Oh, hold on one second.

How am I going to make this music work on the guitar?

How am I going to learn it?

How am I going to make it sound good?

All of those things have to come together.

- Famed Chinese composer Tan Dun agreed to write a daring concerto for Sharon fusing together Western and Eastern traditions.

He knew the piece would be a challenge for any guitar soloist.

- He said, "I really like the idea of writing something "that would combine the history of the Spanish guitar with the ancient Chinese lute, or pipa."

- She never says no to me.

I try whatever I want to try.

(playing and vocalizing glissando effect) She's always so brave.

- That's the joy of entering the world of a composer like Tan Dun.

I become in some way a part of him, and he a part of me.

The music has so many different contrasts between sensuality, excitement and fire and anger.

To find a way to express that on one instrument with an orchestra behind me is a very, very powerful experience.

(applause) - Sharon has a really commanding presence onstage-- one of those things you can't put into words.

She walks, sits down, places the guitar, and waits for you to be drawn into her world, which she inhabits and wants you to join.

And that's very rare.

- Christopher Rouse teaches at Juilliard, and is one of the leading composers of his generation.

And I'm sure she tackled him in the hall and said, "I'm not letting you up until you write me a concerto."

- And you weren't scared.

Why weren't you scared?

- Because I knew that you would help me through it.

- One of the things I remember asking you to do was to write something that had not only virtuosity, but something that would be really, really beautiful and meltingly lyrical.

And what I love about that too, you can really... when you have a single line on this instrument you can really caress it and create all those beautiful... (demonstrates portamento) ...portamenti, which you can't do on a piano.

- Right.

- I'm really proud when I can say I've done this concerto by Chris almost 60 times.

It's really great to be able to give birth to something and nurture it through its lifetime.

- Sharon has that marvelous ability that not all musicians have to take you on a journey.

- When I'm playing, there's the sense of identifying with the character and nature of the music much as an actor would on the stage.

I become that character through the music, and I live that music.

The touch of the instrument is something that is very much a part of what makes the performance uniquely mine.

There's no keys.

There are no bows.

There's no interference in any way between the contact with the string and my fingers.

It's really drawing the sound out of the instrument.

Well, there's no pick involved, so it's really you.

You are the instrument.

- Each summer Sharon travels to Colorado, where she teaches guitar to the next generation at the Aspen Music Festival.

(vocalizing rhythm) Otherwise it's... (vocalizes same rhythm less energetically) - It is a place dear to her heart.

As a teenager, she studied there with renowned Italian guitarist Oscar Ghiglia.

- Starting in the early '70s I spent five summers there.

And that was the first chance that I had to leave Minneapolis and meet players from all over the country.

It pointed up the whole gender thing, because there were 50 guitar students.

Two of us were girls.

I felt like I had to be extra good to prove that I could compete and be better than the other kids so that they would take me seriously, because I didn't want there to be any questions.

I wanted to be the best artist I could.

So you want to make sure you're counting.

She's doing the syncopation.

(vocalizes rhythm) So he's playing the beat that you're not playing, right?

- Studying with Sharon is a very challenging and very intense experience.

- You did that better before, when you had... (vocalizes) Right-- that little agogic accent really... - If she likes what you're doing, you're going to hear about it.

If she doesn't like what you're doing, you're going to also hear about it.

(vocalizes part) So you have to hear... - If you sort of have to guess every time, "Well, is she really meaning that?

What is she really thinking?"

No, there's nothing like that with Sharon.

What she thinks, she says.

- It's better, but not there yet.

So your homework assignment... - In 1989 the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City invited Sharon to create a guitar department.

Now she is its chairwoman.

- I was very honored when in 1989 the Juilliard School asked if I would create their first guitar program.

I know Segovia had wanted to do that, and had hoped that he would have the opportunity.

- I actually knew Sharon when she was a student at Yale as an undergraduate.

And she was an extraordinary performing artist there.

I thought the mix was perfect for starting a serious guitar program at Juilliard.

- Yes, bravo!

Almost as good, but not quite.

- Sharon has such keen hearing, and she can zone in on such specific detail that you really have to be in a state of complete focus at all times.

And if you are, if you got enough sleep the previous night, it's transformative.

- If you divide the phrase in half, then you have a strong beat right there.

So you've got... - Having Sharon listen in that way, and listening for colors, listening for phrasing, is really something special.

- Sharon was my first female teacher.

Up to that age I had only male teachers.

And that was fantastic, actually.

- Nice.

- She was a woman making it in a male-dominated world, standing for her art, doing what she really wanted to do.

- ...still are used to backing off, so... - Just being around her and studying with her and following her career was always and still is a great inspiration.

- She is obviously a pioneer in that she has made a commanding place for herself in a corner of the musical world that is dominated by men.

And that's going to inspire future generations of women.

- For me growing up, I had just a couple women to look up to.

You know, there's Billie Jean King, of course, and Margaret Court.

But most of the other people are men that you look up to.

And in the music world, also it's been mostly men.

And classical guitarists, I don't know of any other.

Sharon's definitely a pioneer.

And it's great that girls growing up now, they can see "Hey, you know, I can do that."

Because they don't have to approach new ground.

Now little girls can aspire for something that perhaps wouldn't have occurred to them otherwise.

- The arts have dictated that women play certain roles just as society has dictated that in regular day-to-day life.

And people like Sharon, people like myself, people like Ruthie Foster or Bonnie Raitt, are breaking ground for those women.

It's not easy.

It's not comfortable.

And a lot of the time it's not friendly.

- Sharon's successes would have been satisfying enough for many in her league.

And she could have rested comfortably on her classical laurels.

Instead she boldly ventured into territories that Segovia himself had not even considered-- the worlds of popular music and jazz.

- Crossover is a very charged subject, because so many people aren't good at it.

The world is full of crossover records by opera singers who don't have the vaguest notion of how to sing a song by Gershwin.

The exceptional people, they're constantly reinventing themselves and looking for new horizons.

- I got a phone call to form a trio for a night with Laurinda Almeida from Brazil, and Larry Coryell, the great rock guitarist, that was both exciting, but also perplexing.

What am I going to do with these guys?

One of the things that I had to adapt to is that these fellows are making music on the spot, improvising.

There's a swing in Brazilian music that's not on the page.

You have to know what to do with that.

It was so much fun that we ended up playing together for the next five years.

At the time, people were worried for me and they... "Well, aren't you still going to play your Bach?

Aren't you still going to do your contemporary music?"

I said, "Yes, I'm going to do that too."

A sort of looseness came, working with people who improvise, that has informed my playing in all kinds of music.

- What's important about Sharon is that she isn't like anybody else.

She found her own road and has continued to go down it.

- We really hit it off, you know?

There was a very nice kind of a connection.

- It was a chance to really work with one of the great, great rock guitarists of our time.

- It's not even like apples and oranges, what we do.

It's like apples and, you know, beef yogurt or something.

- You're going to teach me how to play that, right?

- Well, I'm going to give it a good shot, but, you know, I want to know a little bit about it.

- I don't even know how to hold a pick.

- So here's your pick.

- My pick, okay.

- Okay, let me see what you've got.

- Now, the bar looks like it's kind of in the way here.

My leg is in the way.

- That's good.

It's a comfortable... - Should I cross my legs?

Is that better?

- Go, man, go!

- Whoa!

How do you stop it?

Why does this do that?

- I love that you can't play.

- It sounds like I have some distortion on there.

- Oh, you've got a lot of distortion.

- Do we want that?

Do I have potential?

- This is like poetry here.

- For something.

- No, you have no potential at all on the guitar.

Sharon asked me to write a piece of music for her and myself, so I did.

It was called The Blossom Suite.

- We premiered that in Paris.

It was an extraordinary experience.

It was kind of like being the Beatles for a night, because we were completely mobbed by autograph seekers.

(both laughing) - It's a whole different venue tonight.

I mean, we're at a fabled jazz club in New York, Stanley improvising.

It can change in a moment.

I haven't explored improvising in the way that, say, a jazz musician does.

Mine is a more limited kind of expanding the boundaries and opening up the possibilities to adapt to what others are doing, but I haven't reached the point where I'm able to pick up a guitar and just make up music.

It's a challenge for all of us to create and synthesize something completely new.

(applause) In any given season I have to do something like seven different concerti, two different recital programs, chamber music programs.

It's tough to really juggle all of that, head the guitar department at Juilliard, head the guitar department at the Aspen Music Festival, all the administrative work that goes on with that, creating projects, working with composers, finding funding.

I feel like sometimes I'm ten people combined into one.

So for me, in a way, traveling is almost a relaxing thing.

I wear this ridiculous mask to keep me healthy.

And... because the air on the plane isn't so great, and people are sneezing and coughing all over the place, so I look a little bit like a monster, and nobody wants to talk to me.

So it works out just perfectly.

I do a lot of mental work on the plane or in a bus where I'm actually visualizing all the left and right hand fingerings as I'm hearing the music, so that I can create my ideal of what I want.

So when I land somewhere I've got the memory thing very solid.

It's now a matter of practicing.

I always like going to Italy, because it reminds me of how I ended up becoming a guitarist.

Those are my roots.

♪ ♪ One of the things about not using a pick, but your nails, is that you can't afford to break them.

If you do, you're in deep trouble.

So we all have to travel with fake nails, Krazy Glue.

You can always tell a classical guitarist, because the nails on the right hand will be long and the left hand will be short, so that you can fret the instrument.

I think that every guitarist is going to choose the length of their fingernail based on what works for them.

For me it's following the shape of the finger, just peeking above the top of the flesh.

If it's too long it will get stuck.

If it's too short you can't quite hit the strings.

So somewhere in the middle there.

Ravenna Festival is one of the great festivals in Italy.

It's a thrill to be able to participate.

When you're going to play with an orchestra, you want to see eye-to-eye with the person on the podium who's directing it.

This I play out of tempo, a little slower.

Then if you conduct right after that, then I follow you, and everybody is sure to be together.

I love meeting with the conductor beforehand, sharing my thoughts on the music, offering a few little tips for special spots where we can really coordinate together and make that exciting and happen.

- Okay.

- And one little thing.

- Yeah?

- If they can crescendo each of these...

There has to be a real camaraderie of spirit so that we're on the same team.

Joaquin Rodrigo is the Spanish composer who really put the guitar on the map when it came to guitar playing with orchestra.

He wrote one of the most famous pieces of music, really, in the world.

It's the Concierto de Aranjuez.

For the guitarists, and the guitar world, it is a gift that is invaluable.

To have taken an instrument that rarely ever played with orchestra, and created a work of music that every orchestra wants to play, it is something that will be cherished forever.

In 1995 I had done an interview with one of the gay magazines, OUT Magazine.

It was, for me, a bit terrifying.

I had never discussed any aspect of my personal life in the press.

And I thought, "Oh, my God, everybody's going to know now."

And a week later I was performing in Atlanta, Georgia.

I walked out on the stage and practically got a standing ovation before I played a note.

And I thought, "Oh, this is amazing.

I'm the only one having a problem with this."

I had to realize that I had layers within me of homophobia that I had to let go of so that I could accept myself as a gay woman as much as everybody around me seemed to be doing.

And once I did, it was as if a big burden had been lifted, and I could just feel free to be myself.

That was it.

The door was opened, never to shut again.

- I'm sorry-- I'll be out of here in a minute.

- You don't have to leave.

- Oh, yes, you do.

- Soon after coming out, Sharon was contacted by Showtime's popular dramatic series The L Word.

- You'd be well advised not to get involved.

- I need you as a witness.

- This was a unique show that was revolutionary.

- I really have to go.

I remember Alice is having this gathering at The Planet.

- I will not beg for scraps.

- It portrayed lives of women living in Los Angeles as something as natural as your typical couple down the street.

Several friends kept saying, "Hey, you know, "you should be on The L Word.

You should play at The Planet."

- What a treat to have Sharon Isbin.

- Oh, my friend Benjamin looked it up.

He thought she'd be perfect for the kind of music we do in here.

- So I actually played myself, hired to star at The Planet for an evening.

That's your sister?

The one who just broke up with her partner?

- So?

- She's beautiful.

Introduce me to her in... six months.

My scene was filmed with Pam Grier, and they made me very comfortable, kept me laughing.

And it was a hoot.

I idolized Joan Baez from teenage years.

I just thought she was the most beautiful folk performer that I'd ever heard.

For me, to hear her music would bring me to tears.

- ♪ When first I came to Louisville ♪ ♪ Some pleasure there to find... ♪ - Sharon asked British composer John Duarte to create a guitar suite using early Joan Baez songs.

She wanted a work that would seamlessly combine the two great musical passions of her teenage years-- classical and folk.

- My mom heard the suite and was very impressed.

And she said, "You've got to hear her."

- When she actually heard a performance of the work, she offered to sing on the album.

Look who's there.

Oh, so great to see you.

- Good to see you.

- I never dreamed that I would ever meet her, let alone perform with her.

She came to my apartment in New York.

We were to have our first rehearsal.

We sat down and visited for a while, and then she said, "Why don't you play for me?"

- I was very moved by that, remembering many, many years ago, listening to Segovia play it, and then listening to the young people in Harvard Square try to imitate that and nobody could quite get the flourishes on it the way Sharon has them down.

- Mark O'Connor is one of the world's great country fiddle players.

He said he'd really like to write something for me.

I said, "Well, what about arranging Strings and Threads, creating a new composition, basically, for the two of us?"

It was so exciting that I said, "Mark, you've got to come "with me to the studio next month, and we're going to add this to my album."

- Journey to the New World was a bestselling album, and earned Sharon her second Grammy.

She's had four nominations.

This time she was asked to perform at the Los Angeles Grammy Award ceremonies in 2010.

There, amidst a glittering sea of rock stars and sound checks, sat a slightly overwhelmed classical guitarist.

- And the Grammy goes to Journey to the New World, Sharon Isbin.

- Wow, this is a great honor.

I'd like to thank Joan Baez and Mark O'Connor.

- I've known Sharon Isbin about three or four years now.

We live in the same apartment building here in New York.

She's very nice and very friendly, but really inconvenient, because so often you'll be riding up in the elevator and they'll be delivering her awards and there'll be these big boxes of awards.

She gets, like, 100 every week, and it just gets very crowded.

And I... honestly, you could tell her, if she could use the freight elevator for the awards, it would make it easier for the rest of us.

But other than that, she's okay.

(applause) - I was fortunate to have occasional lessons with Segovia, Julian Bream.

It was a combination of having a little bit of outside guidance, but an enormous amount of self-determination and just the will to really figure this out and become the best I could be.

- The little girl from Minnesota who loved rockets and dreamed of visiting other planets instead has pioneered very different spheres.

And in the process, as a performer and teacher, has opened the way worldwide for female musicians who want to follow her lead.

She has literally become an inspirational troubadour for the 21st century, traveling to every continent, promoting her impeccable artistry on the guitar.

What became of Sharon's childhood dreams of traveling through outer space?

Even they eventually came true.

In November 1995, the space shuttle Atlantis blasted off.

On board, Sharon's CD American Landscapes, a gift to Russian cosmonauts during a rendezvous with Mir.

- What I feel that I've done is to have many, many works written for me that will last far beyond my life.

This has really changed the landscape of the instrument, and that's what I feel I'm most proud of.

And it's something that really doesn't involve me as much as it does a team of other people, of wonderfully creative composers and performers that I've collaborated with who have brought, along with me, the instrument to a new place.

(cheers and applause) Sharon Isbin: Troubadour is available on DVD for $29.95 and on Blu-ray for $34.95, plus shipping and handling.

To order, please call 1-800-477-7146, or order online at sharonisbin.com.

Sharon Isbin: Five Classic Albums is a five-CD boxed set of music from the documentary with additional tracks, and is available for $17.99, plus shipping and handling.

To order online, please visit sharonisbin.com.