| ISPA 2026 New York Congress – Nicola Benedetti |
 Nicola BenedettiFestival Director Nicola opens her 2025-26 season with a unique and personal solo tour of pre-eminent stages across the UK and Ireland including the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, National Concert Hall Dublin, and the Royal Albert Hall. Coinciding with the release of her new album Violin Café, this marks Nicola’s first solo tour in over a decade, combining popular virtuosic and seductive romantic works, arranged for violin, guitar, accordion and cello. Elsewhere in the season Nicola returns to the New York and Czech Philharmonic Orchestras with the Marsalis Violin Concerto, to the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Royal Scottish National, Philharmonia and London Philharmonic Orchestras with the Elgar Violin Concerto, and to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor. Nicola Benedetti is a GRAMMY Award winner (Best Classical Instrumental Solo, 2020), two-time winner of Best Female Artist at the Classical BRIT Awards, and in 2021 was recognised as BBC Music Magazine’s ‘Personality of the Year’ for her online support of young musicians during the pandemic. A long-time leader in music education, she established the Benedetti Foundation in 2019, delivering transformative experiences through mass music events. Nicola was appointed a CBE in 2019, awarded the Queen’s Medal for Music (2017), and an MBE in 2013. In October 2022, Nicola became the Festival Director of the Edinburgh International Festival. In taking the role she became both the first Scottish and the first female Festival Director since the Festival began in 1947.
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