It must be every aspiring songwriter's dream to have an internationally famous artist perform their lyrics before a live audience, but for Judy Tavares, the dream becomes reality on June 22 when Alex Fox premi?res her first song, ‘Bermuda, Beautiful Bermuda', before an expected capacity audience at Barr's Bay Park. Not only that, but the song has also been included in Mr. Fox's latest album, which will be available at the concert.

“Alex is very excited about this song,” Ms Tavares says. “In fact, after I e-mailed him the lyrics, he got in at 3 a.m. and by 8 a.m. he had arranged all the music.”

She describes the melody as a “happy, Latino/soft calypso”, and says the lyrics are mainly in English with a touch of Spanish “to give a Latino flavour”.

Ms Tavares chose the title of her song to reflect her love of her homeland.

“I have travelled around the world, and I feel very fortunate to have been born in Bermuda,” she says. “The Island has inspired me to write this song.”

The actual writing occurred during a long flight back to the Island when she couldn't sleep.

“The idea for the song came into my mind, and I had to get up and write it right away,” she says. “I have always loved to write poetry, but I had never written a song before and I didn't even have a piece of paper to use so I wrote it on my ticket holder.”

She is delighted that a fellow Bermudian is also involved in Mr. Fox's new album.

“Roland Skinner has kindly donated a wonderful photograph for the cover, which is of beautiful crystal water and clean pink sand.”

A novice songwriter she might be, but Ms Tavares is no stranger to the music world. Locally, she has performed in Eddie DeMello productions, and with several groups, and during the ten years she lived in France she sang in discos, caf?s and restaurants. She was also a DJ, and had her own country and western radio show.

“The French absolutely loved it,” she says of the show, noting that her entertaining was in addition to running her own restaurant.

“I have always loved all types of music, and I was collecting records from the age of six, and then on to cassettes and CDs - the works,” she says.

As so often happens, when one break comes others seem to follow, and so it is with Ms Tavares.

“I may be doing something else with Alex, and also with Tony Crane from the Mersey Beats, an English group which was popular in the 1960s. They performed more with the Beatles than anyone else - ever,” she says. “This is all so exciting. I am just over the moon.”