Music from the Heart: Esteban and Teresa Joy

Music from the Heart: Esteban and Teresa Joy Description

• Classical Spanish guitarist
• Trained by the legendary Andres Segovia
• Has released more than a dozen albums
• Venue: Intimate cabaret theater
• Audience: Latin and Flamenco music lovers
• Venue type: Vegas showroom

You may recognize him from QVC-TV, the shopping channel.

Sunglasses, bolero hat, guitar, selling his CDs and guitars.

Onstage he is Esteban.

He was born Stephen Paul in Pittsburgh, a guitar prodigy who taught himself to play at the age of 8 and went on to study with the legendary Andres Segovia.

"My show is kind of like music from the beginning of time to the present," Esteban said during a telephone interview from his Florida home. "We go from 6000 B.C., through ancient music to the beginnings of classical music, jazz, rock."

He says his shows are never the same.

"I have 600 songs, and I just pick them when we're onstage," Esteban said. "It's never rehearsed. Everything is spontaneous."

Esteban is a classically trained guitarist, who, over the years, expanded his repertoire to cover it all.

"I wanted to play all kinds of music," he said. "And I do that in our gigs - rock 'n' roll, Bach, jazz, country. We do a 'dueling banjos' with a violin and guitar - a lot of fun stuff."

Esteban, son of a steelworker, majored in music and English at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. After graduation he decided he needed further study and sought out Segovia, who was considered one of the best - if not the best - guitar players in the world.

Segovia was an international performer, but he lived in Spain, where he sometimes took on students.

"I applied to Segovia to be in his master's class," Esteban said.

With 10,000 applicants, few were accepted.

"I haunted him," Esteban said. "I sent him yellow postcards for years, telling him my life was meaningless unless he would take me on as a student."

Esteban finally met him in Los Angeles in 1972 and he was accepted into the program. But to study he had to periodically go to Madrid.

"For five years ('73-'78) I studied with Segovia when he had the time and I had the money," he said. "To earn money, I hung out on the streets of Madrid, playing for tips."

After being endorsed by Segovia, Esteban said he returned to the United States and moved from Los Angeles to Phoenix, ready to begin his musical career.

"I toured for almost a year," he said.

And then tragedy struck.

In 1980 while driving home from the airport in Phoenix he was hit by a drunken driver. There were a lot of injuries: broken ribs, right eye left sensitive to light, teeth knocked out.

But the worst was to his hand.

"I had no feeling in three fingers of my left hand," Esteban said. "The nerves in my spine were damaged."

Since he could no longer play guitar he became a salesman, selling solar systems.

"I didn't know what else to do," Esteban said. "I was in bad shape; I was married and had a couple of kids - all I ever did was play guitar.

"I was thrown into a mess."

He did all right in sales for about eight years.

"It was interesting, but not gratifying," Esteban said.

Eventually, he turned to acupuncture for help.

"And my hand slowly began to come back," he said. "I could feel the strings."

By 1990 he was playing again.

"I was doing what I was meant to do," Esteban said.

He began touring extensively, turning out albums and selling them on QVC.

Esteban says he may have lost a little in his playing ability - his hand is still not 100 percent.

"But I make up for it by playing my heart out," he said.