The Genius of Lenny Breau Remembered

Emily Hughes is the daughter of the late guitar virtuoso Lenny Breau, and jazz-singer Judy Singh.

Growing up, Hughes was constantly exposed to jazz: “Mom was a fan of everything from vocalists, Ella, Sarah and Flora Purim to jazz/rock fusion. In her career, among many things, my mother has written for and recorded with the likes of the late Woody Shaw.”

“When I was little, my mother taught me how to really listen to music,” Hughes recalls. “I remember her putting on a jazz record and saying, ‘Just listen to the drums, nothing else.’ And then a few minutes later she would say, ‘Now just listen to the bass.’ She also taught me the beauty of improvisation and the freedom that comes with it.”

Hughes’ leap from music to media was gradual, evolving from her start appearing in numerous print ads, and then as an actor in international television commercials for Crest and McDonald’s, to film and commercial TV; she co-anchored the live variety show, “The Edge”.

The collective influences and experiences of her life inspired Hughes in 1999 to make her compelling, Gemini Award-winning documentary, “The Genius of Lenny Breau”, an intimate study of her father’s life and works. The film is an emotional tour de force of the man Hughes loved as a father, but saw too little of, thanks to his extraordinary devotion to music and his tumultuous personal life. It pays heed to his trials and tribulations, but never fails to honour his many triumphs.

For the film, Hughes had the privilege of interviewing her father’s friends, colleagues and admirers, such as the now-late Chet Atkins, Andy Summers, Leonard Cohen, Randy Bachman, Liona Boyd, George Benson and Pat Metheney. Originally aired on the Bravo Network, the film garnered its Gemini Award in 2001, and went on to win several other international film festival awards. With gritty strength and a balanced nuance, the film’s staying power has been paramount, encouraging Hughes, who remains impressed by the on-going keen interest in her work, to produce a follow-up that takes the journey further and deeper.
In producing the first film, Hughes retraced her father’s steps, travelling roads that less stalwart and ambitious souls might have feared to explore. “It has been cathartic, of course,” Hughes acknowledges. “And I’ve had to walk through some pretty dark valleys.”

In the process, she learned more about the father she seldom saw as she was growing up. “My memories of Lenny are few,” she admits. “But he and Mom reconciled a few times when I was a kid. I’ll always remember the long, elegant fingernails on Lenny’s right hand, and that they were filed right down on his fretting hand; that stood out to a little girl.” Without excuse or apology, Hughes notes, “Although he wasn’t a father in the traditional sense, what he passed on to me was priceless.”

To this day, Hughes has a deep, abiding love for the guitar. Although she studied the instrument, she discovered that her natural ability did not match the unusually high standard that she had set for herself. “I found it discouraging that I couldn’t play what I liked the most,” she says. What she does like the most is the music of fusion luminaries like Mike Stern and John Scofield. She is also a fan of Tommy Emmanuel, Phil deGruy and Derek Trucks.