CANBERRA-born classical guitarist Rupert Boyd, his wife Laura and son Milo are enjoying a few private days with his parents and all his siblings for the first time in four years.

Covid took the wind out of the sails of the duo Boyd Meets Girl, but not so much that Boyd and his cellist wife couldn’t get out an album, “Songs of Love & Despair”, which forms the basis of their current tour of 16 different venues across Australia.

“We came here for a mini tour in 2022,” Boyd tells me, “but then Laura caught covid, so we only spent 45 minutes in Canberra.”

Boyd is a product of Ainslie Primary School, Campbell High, Dickson College and the ANU School of Music and comes from an artistic family, with his grandfather the legendary modernist architect, Robin Boyd.

“My parents are music lovers and I grew up hearing them playing Bruce Springsteen and Brahms, but I was the only one who actually played,” he says.

Luckily, Ainslie Primary School had an affiliation with the ANU School of Music and he started studying seriously from age seven.

The guitar, we agree, is not easy to play and he says: “I’m convinced it’s the hardest instrument, it’s so much harder to make it sound good, but I’m in disagreement with my wife on this.”

On the positive side, he says, it’s an instrument that you can play solo and it still sounds good, and it’s so accessible.

Once at the ANU School of Music, Boyd was able to study with some of the best. 

Definitely the ANU punches above its weight in guitar, he asserts, adding: “It’s one of the best in the world… I didn’t appreciate that until I went to Yale and the Manhattan School of Music, where it was not quite what I was accustomed to.”

He put it all down to ANU guitar maestro Timothy Kain and says: “I’ve never met a better teacher. 

“After my bachelor’s degree at the School of Music, Tim told me I’d better go and look elsewhere.” 

So, at age 22, thinking of taking a break from Canberra and heading for the big smoke, he looked to the US.

“At 22, I’d never left Australia before and I auditioned for the Manhattan School of Music via VHS… amazingly I got a scholarship and bought a one-way ticket.”

Boyd was initially all on his own. When he looked in the New York City telephone directory, he realised there was no one he could call. But he had enough money for a one to two-year master’s degree and he was surprised how similar the culture was.

“I was expecting to be more stumped,” he says. Nineteen years later, he’s still there. 

“I had a grand time,” Boyd says. “I didn’t have a clue what I would do, but I knew I could get a one-year working visa after graduation.”

Then someone gave $100 million to the Yale School of Music for artist diplomas, so he applied, got in and moved to New Haven, coming back on weekends to New York City. 

“I strung it out for four years teaching and finding gigs,” he says.

During this period, he’d met Laura, who’d come from studying in Boston and was performing in a quintet, but like ships in the night, they’d meet in solo and guitar concerts. Eventually, having started dating in 2012, they put together a program in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The pair have long-since married and their son Milo, who’s just turned five, loves to dance and sing, but is not interested in playing.

“Laura and I will encourage him, but not force him. We want him to study piano in a casual sense, so that he can read music.”

As for the name, Boyd Meets Girl, well it beats their second choice, the Boyd Metcalf Duo, and as Boyd says, it’s “cheesy but memorable”.

The couple have toured the length and breadth of the US, have been to NZ, Nepal and India, where they found “such excitement about western classical music”.

They’ve released two albums and run a concert and spoken-word series, “Gather NYC” every Sunday from October to May.

Boyd is now 41 and says: “When I was younger, I felt the world was my oyster… now I’ve made my home in Manhattan and survived and everything is pretty good.”

Audiences, he believes, will see that in the concerts (“actually much more love than despair”), which are based on the new album.

Boyd Meets Girl, Wesley Music Centre, 20 National Circuit, Forrest, August 26.