For the past five years, Prescott’s historic Elks Theatre has been home to a festive musical tradition, as best-selling guitarist Esteban and his daughter, violinist Teresa Joy, perform their Spanish-flavored renditions of classic and contemporary Christmas songs. Their concerts, featuring unique arrangements of carols like God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and Carol of the Bells, are a family affair, with Esteban’s son, Benjamin, joining on keyboards and bass.
Perhaps the most famous musician based in Prescott, best-selling guitarist Esteban has been performing with his daughter, “violin tamer” Teresa Joy, at Prescott’s historic Elks Theatre over the last five Decembers, sharing their Spanish-flavored styling of traditional and contemporary songs.
In a family affair with Esteban’s son also performing, they played at the Elks Dec. 15, and will play two more intimate shows on Dec. 22, at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., at Whiskey Row’s Grand Highland Hotel.
“We love Christmas music,” Joy says. “We have a full five-piece band, and my brother Benjamin plays keyboards for these upcoming Christmas concerts. He also plays bass in trumpet. Ben started playing with us a little while back. We’re just going to have a really fun Christmas from the heart celebration.”
“We’ll have arrangements that are just spectacular,” Esteban says. “I mean, we play Christmas songs like God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, and we have a whole cool arrangement and it’s like wild and crazy. Carol of the Bells, we do all the Christmas songs and unique arrangements that nobody’s ever heard of before unless they’ve been to our Christmas gigs.
“It’s really fun. We play Christmas songs like you’ve never heard before. You’ve heard ‘em, but you’ve never heard ‘em like this.”
At 76, Esteban (a.k.a. Stephen Paul) has been adding his own twist to music for more than six decades since he was first given a guitar by his uncle. The Pittsburgh native was two weeks away from joining his father in the steel mills when he auditioned for and won a music scholarship at Carnegie Mellon University.
His journey brought him under the tutelage of guitar masters Andres Segovia and Vicente Gomez, into a long-running gig at a Scottsdale resort and, starting in 2000, the studios of QVC and Home Shopping Network, where he sold hundreds of thousands of copies and landed on the Billboard charts.
He moved his family to the Phoenix area from California following a 1979 earthquake that rattled the family to its foundation.
A couple of years later he was severely injured in a car wreck and wasn’t able to play for a decade, while his kids were picking up the family business.
“He couldn’t play my whole childhood,” Joy says. “But when he started playing again, I started playing with him because I had played violin that whole time. So I started playing with him when I was 11 and have been playing with him off and on since then.”
Esteban says: “She’s incredible on the violin. Nobody plays like her in the whole world. She’s this beautiful little soul that plays from the heavens. And I really feel it. And she does. And when we play together, it’s magical. Everybody stands up and they love it. They cheer.”
Esteban moved to the Prescott area six years ago from Las Vegas after having lived everywhere from New York to Florida to New Mexico.
“I love Arizona. I love the big saguaros and the desert landscaping and everything. And it just fit all of our needs. We just love it here,” he said. He added that given his age and other factors he’s not so fond of trekking to far-flung concert venues, so he’s been trying to stay closer to home.
Besides their holiday concerts, he and Joy have also become Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day fixtures at the Elks Theatre and have been playing at the Musical Instrument Museum and Orpheum Theatre in Phoenix.
They’re also looking for corporate and private gigs locally: “I just don’t like traveling so much anymore. I want to keep playing because I love to play so much, so I’m doing a lot of private concerts, and my daughter books me, she just booked me for last week down in Phoenix, and I played for a beautiful, beautiful birthday party. It was awesome. And they loved it.”
To learn more about Esteban visit www.estebanmusic.com, and for information about booking opportunities write
bookings@estebanmusic.com.
