Nicola Benedetti on marrying a man 25 years her senior

Telegraph

28-07-2025

As one of the best-known violinists in the world, Nicola Benedetti enjoys a stellar public profile. Yet she has maintained a strict secrecy around her private life, even though it has been long-rumoured in music circles.
Now she has confirmed for the first time that she is married to Wynton Marsalis, the celebrated jazz musician who is 25 years her senior, and they have a baby daughter.
They met professionally when she was 17 and he was 42, and much later began a romantic relationship.
Benedetti has publicly shared the joys of motherhood but did not, until now, confirm the identity of the father.
Speaking to the Telegraph, Benedetti, 38, said of her marriage to Marsalis, 63, who counts former US president Barack Obama among his admirers: 'I think it's pretty much out there now. I really don't care any more if people want to write about it or not.'
Explaining why she has not talked about her relationship with Marsalis, with whom she has collaborated on musical projects for many years, Benedetti said: 'I don't tend to discuss my private life because people don't come to my concerts because of whom I'm in a relationship with. They come because I play the violin.'
Benedetti was 17 when she travelled to New York to attend the American Academy of Achievement summit as a student-delegate. A year earlier, she had won the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition.
She performed in the company of Marsalis, a trumpeter who was the first jazz musician to receive the Pulitzer Prize.
'When we met then, I was already a huge fan, and we just kept in touch as good friends,' Benedetti once explained. Marsalis has said they felt 'a certain type of kinship'.
Many years later, Marsalis wrote a violin concerto for Benedetti, although in a joint interview they joked about not remembering who had proposed the idea. Marsalis said: 'It's like a scene from When Harry Met Sally. I don't know if I said it or she said it.'
They have continued to collaborate and perform together.
Benedetti, from Ayrshire in Scotland, is artistic director of the Edinburgh International Festival and had her daughter in May 2024. Marsalis also has a teenage daughter and two adult sons from previous relationships.
The 'Pied Piper' of jazz
Marsalis started playing the trumpet at the age of six and went on to become a key figure in the jazz renaissance of the 1980s.
He has been credited with rekindling interest in the genre, has been referred to as the 'Pied Piper' of jazz and won nine Grammy awards during his career.
He is currently the artistic director of Jazz at the Lincoln Center, in New York.
Benedetti told the Telegraph that she has begun to question her upbringing, during which her mother made her and her older sister practise the violin for three hours every day during the school holidays.
'My daughter is only one, but my sister has two children, aged three and five, and seeing her experience has definitely made me consider my own childhood,' she said.
'But both of us have a realistic, even a positive view of our upbringing. It was very strict – we feared upsetting our parents, or doing the wrong thing – but we also knew we were loved to death by our mum and dad.'
She believes that today's young people are less willing to make the sacrifices required to become a world-class musician, saying: 'I think young people have become used to a lack of basic discipline in their daily lives – and that really worries me.'