Born: 21 June, 1929 Alexandria, Egypt
Died: 24 August, 1999
Guitarist

Perhaps a movie could be made of the musical love affair, which was the life and career of Alexandre Lagoya and his beloved wife Ida Presti. They were the first (and thus far only) internationally successful classical guitar duo.

Lagoya's early life was fascinating. He was born in Alexandria to Italian and Greek parents. Alexandria in the days before the cataclysm of WWII was a truly international city and home to enormous European immigrant populations. Lagoya started his career at age thirteen and by his nineteenth birthday had already played 500 concerts throughout the Middle East.

He knew though he had to conquer Europe to grow and so he went to Sienna, Italy at the age of twenty-one to study with Andres Segovia. From there it was Paris and fate took him in hand. At one of his first concerts he met another Segovia student, a brilliant young Frenchwoman named Ida Presti. She was so accomplished, Segovia called her 'Ida Prestissimo!'

They fell in love immediately and married in 1950. Until Ida Presti's tragic death in 1967 from lung cancer, they were the celebrated guitar duo in concert and on countless recordings for Mercury and later Philips. Their musical collaboration was renowned for its sensitivity and intimacy as well as its virtuosity.

Lagoya vowed to give up playing forever when Presti died, but five years later, with the help of friends he began his third career, again as a soloist. He branched out and collaborated with flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal and jazz pianist Claude Bolling in more celebrated recordings and played beautifully until his own death in 1999.