In The Spotlight: First Lady Of The [Classical] Guitar

In the previous posts about Female Composers ("Women will be Women: Female Composers", Part I & Part II), it has mentioned that the information about female composers have been vanished from music history, due to societal constructions. To continue the search for female composers in music history, I would like to highlight a few female guitarists, who deserve a spotlight cause of their (re)markably important role. They deserve to be remembered! In this post II would like to introduce you to the First Lady of the [Classical] Guitar:    Liona Boyd.

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Liona Boyd, has been born in 1949 in London, United Kingdom. Although she grew up mostly in Toronto, Canada. Her mother came from England, her father from Spain.Her grandmother was from Linares (Spain), the birthplace of the "King of the Classical Guitar", who was called Andrés Segovia.
When Liona Boyd was 13 years old, her parents gave her a Christmas present: Her first Spanish Guitar. Although it hang on the wall, while moving back and forth from England and Canada. Regurlarly her parents took Liana Boyd to classical concerts, and supported her to write. She actually fell in love with the guitar and Spanish music. She had been in Spain a lot when she was young - And so, she had been given the opportunity to take lessons from a few Spanish teachers, including Andrés Segovia.

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*Andrés Segovia. He had invented new techniques to make a different approach in playing the guitar, which made him stood out from the way of guitarplaying at the famous  Tárrega school (Francisco Tárrega; the "Father of Classical Guitar", who wrote the song 'Gran Vals' and who bought a guitar from "The most important guitar from the 19th century"- makerAntonio Torres).
Andrés Segovia made a few new inventions to become "The King of the Classical Guitar":
1. He picked the guitarstrings with his nails instead of a plectrum. This resulted in a sound with more timbre differences and colour variations ánd it gives a clear volume to the guitar.
2. Instead of focussing on technique, Andrés Segovia created a strong and voluminous sound in the bass notes by playing the guitarstrings with his right thumb.
3. He placed the right hand further to the right side of the guitar. This causes tention in the guitarstrings, and so a colour variation and a strong, round and voluminous sound. Perfect for concerts in big halls. The Tárrega school played the guitar with the hand right over the soundhole, which causes a mellow sound and thus better for smaller concert locations.
4. After World War II, Andrés Segovia was one of the first guitarists to apply nylon strings on the classical guitar instead of the usual catgut strings. This means tone stability.
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Meanwhile, Liona Boyd settled in Toronto, Canada. At that time, Toronto became the hub for the classical guitar and it created a real guitar society. The hub brought in different performers and guitarists to expand it's society. Liona Boyd was a music student and so she was privileged to join and play in Toronto too.
Four years later, in 1972 - she was 21 - Liona Boyd graduated with a Bachelor of Music Degree. Even so the study had no course in becoming a composer, she had no idea that she would become the Canadian icon.

By joining the guitar society in Toronto, there has been many opportunities for Liona Boyd to work with a lot of other spanish guitarists to expand the musical repetoire of spanish classical music. Back in the days there were not so many classical spanish guitarists (let alone women), compared to nowaday's society. Also, she has been creating a network of friendships with classical guitarists to keep the musicgenre alive.

She kept on studying and writing to become a composer. She went to Paris for 2 years and worked with Alexandre Lagoya, a French classical guitarist. In 1974 she released her debut album: The Guitar. It was released on Boot Records and distributed internationally by London Records.

In 1975 she had performed in New York. She noticed in the 80's that the music industry was not prepared for female guitarists yet. The big labels asked her - why "a woman like her" would need royalties. "You have a rich boyfriend, so why do you even care about your royalty rate?" Liona Boyd didn't gave up, and with the support of Andrés Segovia, who gave lessons to support female guitarists in the music industry, she kept going.
Andrés Segovia, the virtuose classical guitarist, sent her a note:

"Through your beauty and talent you will conquer the public, philharmonic or not."

Liona Boyd had toured with the Columbia management in Canada as well. Thereby, touring around the world as a young woman and as a solo-musician made her a music pioneer!
In the beginning she started playing in the little towns and pubs, so called little-guitar-societies. After performing as the opening act for the Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot, Liona Boyd had been performing in the big stadiums. It went even crazier, she could hire her own plane to travel! Although she still preferred to play for the little (music) communities.

In 1976 Liona Boyd joined the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada. In the same year she established her own publishing company:Mid-Continental Music. At that time Liona Boyd had conquered three platinum and four gold albums in Canada. Also, Liona Boyd has recorded songs together with other musicians such as Eric Clapton, David Gilmour and Jesse Cook.

In 1987, Andrés Segovia had passed away. Soon in 1988 Liona Boyd's autobiography got published by Stoddard Publishing of Toronto, Canada: In My Own Key: My Life in Love and Music.

In 1992 Liona Boyd moved to California, where she divorced the Canadian prime minister and got remarried to a real estate developer.

From 2004 till 2011 Liona Boyd has been moving a lot and touring a lot.
After her second divorce she relocated to Miami, Connecticut, California and Florida.She released two records and released 3 albums in this timeframe.Liona Boyd made her homebase in Canada.

In 2016 she formed a new touring duo with Andrew Dolson. She started to experiment with new music styles; a bit more Latin and classical guitar. It lead to an album called Camino Latino.

After so many successes, life took a turn. She just released the album Camino Latino, and noticed a lot of friction in her fingers and hand. Liona Boyd was famous for the guitar technique "tremolo", where the notes are played in a very fast tempo. It was distressing for her to not be able to play as she used to do.

Liona Boyd has spend 3 years trying to figure out what this condition could be. From hypnotherapy to accupuncture..... She tried to use the plectrum, but she didn't liked this way of playing the guitar - cause the beauty of classical guitar is found in the sound of the nails.

Liona Boyd found out it was called "focal dystonia", or simply said 'muscle cramps'. It's a condition where musicians have used their fingers playing an instrument a billion times, and by that their fingers have been 'overplayed'. The brainmap got confused, then smuched and then it changes. Many classical guitarists are dealing with this neurological condition and it is very unfortunate that most of them don't play anymore.
Nowadays there has been studies gonig on about people with more "plasticity" brains, the virtuosos. They develop these brainwires way faster than normal musicians.

Even so, she decided to re-train her fingers. It took a lot of patience, in total after 6 years she got back to the simple basics of playing the guitar. It was very devestating for her. So, she came with a re-invention: She added her voice to the sound of classical guitar.
Mostly classical guitarists don't sing at all!

By discovering her voice, Liona Boyd found a way to combine storytelling and playing the guitar. She played less demanding guitar arrangements and focussed on writing.
Liona Boyd tried to find more classical guitarists who also sang. Srdjan Gjivoje was one of them, and they toured together. Later on she toured with Michael Savona only in Canada.
In this way she turned classical recordings into a New Age music sound.

A year later, in 2017 Liona Boyd got her first autobiography and memoir reissued. Liona Boyd published her second memoir: No Remedy for Love.
In the same year she had filmed "A winter Fantasly", a live christmas special.

In 2018 the first autobiography had been produced as an audiobook.
The latest information is that Liona Boyd's album Once Upon A Time has been released in 2023. Liona Boyd is currently 75 years old and still playing the classical spanish guitar.

Liona Boyd has been (and up to today still is) an inspiration for many young female (classical) guitarists. The mindset of keep on going and to inspire kids to start young to get exposed with classical music are very strong by Liona Boyd. She is looking forward to see a young audience and she believes classical music should keep on traveling around the world.
It is a rich experience and people are lucky to experience these changes in the brain. By that said, Liona Boyd became a real Musical Ambassador, and last but not least:
The First Lady of the [Classical] Guitar.