Liona Boyd
A Winter Fantasy

Canada’s First Lady of the Guitar can’t shred the nylon strings the way she once could, due to a condition called focal dystonia. That explains why her playing on A Winter Fantasy consists of graceful arpeggios, ringing harmonics, and melodies that unfold at an unhurried pace. If the album has something of a new-age feel, its saving grace is that Boyd has the good taste to keep things from getting too saccharine. And that’s quite a feat, because all those glacial strings could easily have added up to something more tooth-rotting than a stockingful of Peppermint Crunch Junior Mints.