Nicola Benedetti says doubters questioned her relationship with 'kindred spirit' husband
Artistic director of the Edinburgh International Festival discusses marriage to acclaimed jazz musician
Nicola Benedetti said she felt as if her husband was her “kindred spirit” from the moment she first met him while she was a teenager, but admitted some people have questioned their relationship.
The world class virtuoso violinist has been married to Wynton Marsalis, 64, since 2021, with the couple welcoming a daughter, Elise, into the world two years ago.
Benedetti, the director of the Edinburgh International Festival, said they first met when she was aged just 17, and Marsalis, an acclaimed jazz trumpeter and composer, was in his forties.
In an interview with Gyles Brandreth for his Rosebud podcast, the 39 year-old admitted some people voiced doubts over her union with someone 25 years her senior, but said she would never have entered into the relationship without being “utterly convinced” he was the person she would marry.
Benedetti, one the country’s leading classical soloists, said she met Marsalis while in New York as a student delegate, where they had a “brief exchange and conversation”.
Soon afterwards, when she was 18 or 19, she was back in the US city for her debut recital, when she and her pianist worked with Marsalis for around three hours practising a sonata by Ravel.
The experience, she reflected, was “unbelievably inspiring,” and she stayed in touch with Marsalis, sending him tapes of her performances and seeking out his advice for her musical career.
Asked by Brandreth when the relationship became romantic, the Grammy-award winning violinist said: “My connection and kindred spirit for Wynton was from the second I met him. Maybe it was also from him to me, but I was 17, so naturally, our worlds did not collide in that way then.”
She said that around 12 years ago, they began working on a violin concerto she had “effectively begged” Marsalis to write, and that he visited one of her performances with the New York Philharmonic.
Benedetti told the podcast that while her father may have found it “tough” for her to marry someone so much older, her parents were well-accustomed to her making “very bold, outlandish, and highly risky choices,” such as leaving school in Ayrshire at the age of 15.
“I think by that point, my parents were a little resigned - okay, she’s going to carve her own path, and it’s not necessarily going to be what we approve of, but then of course they got to know Wynton,” she explained.
She added: “I remember somebody saying to me, ‘Is this relationship going to continue?’ almost as if surely it was not a long-term thing, and I remember saying that I would never have stepped into it if I wasn’t utterly convinced that this was my life, this was going to be the person I would marry.”
Benedetti also said that the demands of their careers and other factors meant that she and her husband faced extra challenges.
“Because the extremities of it were so overwhelming - you know, living in different continents, such a big age gap, the cultural and also racial aspect of our marriage,” she added. “All of these things play a huge factor in tensions of what is difficult anyway for two touring musicians.”
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