By Karen Davis
Almost unnoticed last Christmas Day, one of Guyana’s most accomplished musicians, Joyce Ferdinand-Lalljie (later Saunders) died in Birmingham in the United Kingdom. A child prodigy who began playing one of her mother’s piano pieces at age three, Joyce Ferdinand-Lalljie was a concert pianist/classical music composer. Both she and her younger sister Mavis became concert pianists and were known as ‘the two Ferdinand girls.’
Joyce Ferdinand was born in 1923 in New Amsterdam, Berbice. Her mother Edith was an important musical personality in New Amsterdam, and was a music teacher and organist at two churches – St Patrick’s Anglican Church and Mission Chapel Congregational Church. Joyce, in fact, succeeded her mother as organist at Mission Chapel Church at the age of 21.
In 1946, she married Rev William Lalljie, who encouraged her to continue her musical career, which took her to the
