#MyMusicStory

Submitted by: Liona Boyd (Facebook, Website)

When I was thirteen my mother took me to a concert that would determine the course of my life. The performer was an Englishman, Julian Bream, a virtuoso of what I knew then and there was the most beautiful instrument in the world: the Spanish-style classical guitar. I loved everything about it: the crystalline sounds created by the plucked strings, the beauty of its curved shape, the smell of cedar and rosewood, the way Bream cradled the instrument close to his body, and, of course, the unique and romantic music that he somehow conjured from it.

My father had been born in Spain, and my parents happened to have given me an inexpensive Spanish guitar the previous Christmas. All through my teenage years, learning how to play it was my passion and my obsession. I went on to study with the best teachers in the world, including Bream and the Spanish maestro Andrés Segovia, and I spent two years in Paris as the private student of the French guitarist Alexandre Lagoya.

For the next three decades I toured the globe, releasing twenty-some albums and earning the moniker “The First Lady of the Guitar.” I was a virtuoso and a superstar, appearing three times on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and hosting my own TV specials. My life was a romance novel, a fairy tale complete with a handsome husband in Beverly Hills.

Then, in 2002, I performed my last classical concert. For the past two years I had been struggling with diminished coordination in the middle finger of my right hand. I was diagnosed with musician’s focal dystonia, a little-understood condition that causes a very specific map in the brain to lose its definition. It seemed that forty years of playing the same notes millions of times had caused one finger to rebel and no longer obey my brain’s commands. There was absolutely nothing physically wrong with my hand, and no pain whatsoever, except in my heart. But it felt like a personal tragedy.

I had to quit performing in 2003, and would not return to the stage until 2009. My marriage ended in divorce and I moved all alone to Miami, where, still struggling to retrain my disobedient finger, I fell in love again—this time with the beautiful melodies on an album by a Croatian singer and guitarist named Srdjan Givoje. I must have played that album two hundred times. The music both inspired and healed me. A new career had begun. The first song I recorded with Srdjan was “Little Seabird,” my lyrics an allegory for the struggles of life. I had always written poetry and songs, but had never dared to sing them. I now realized that I was a natural songwriter and reinvented myself as a singer, while still playing my beloved guitar with a simplified technique. I wrote English lyrics to some of the beautiful Croatian melodies and wrote many original songs myself, then recorded an album of love songs with Srdjan. The creative upwelling helped soothe the emotional agonies I had endured over the last six years, when I’d feared my performing days were over forever. Playing and singing at the same time felt so natural, as if it had been my destiny all along.

I have since recorded six new albums, the latest to be released this fall, all produced by the brilliant Peter Bond. After my concerts, when people tell me how my music has touched them, I can only give thanks to the universe for bringing three extraordinary men—Julian Bream, Srdjan Givoje, and Peter Bond—into my life and taking me on unexpected journeys of musical creativity. In return for these blessings I have been able to share, comfort, heal, and inspire others around the world through my music.

Little did my dear mother know as she bought tickets to hear Julian Bream all those years ago how much she was about to change both of our lives.

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Liona Boyd was born in London, UK, and grew up in Toronto. A classical guitarist, singer, and composer, she has released twenty-eight albums and won many awards, including the Order of Canada. She has written two memoirs, In My Own Key (1998) and No Remedy for Love (2017).