'The Nation's Ukulele Orchestra'
BBC News, Radio 4, 23rd September 2014
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News

  • February 9, 2023
    All 18 dates have now been announced for our 2023 spring visit to North America. We will be visiting 11 different states, and 17 venues - revisiting some old favourites and making our debut at several new ones. It will be our first time returning to Canada in 10 years! Read more for the full list of dates and locations with links to tickets.
  • February 2, 2023
    Start your year on the right foot and get your toes tapping with our brand-new album! The sister to our previous album 'One Plucking Thing After Another', it features twisted interpretations of classic songs, rarities, obscurities and all-time favourites. From folk to funk to rock to 1920s jazz, here’s another plucking CD.
  • December 1, 2022
    During lockdown we posted up our songbook of Carols, Christmas songs and music for winter to spread a bit of festive cheer in a challenging time. Here it is again. It’s still relevant. Learn to play some all-time classics for your friends and family, or of course just for yourself to hone those ukulele skills. The corresponding album is still available for sale in our shop if you wanted to play along with us. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, to you - from us.
  • October 6, 2022
    The Retro Tee, designed by our very own Laura Currie, is available for purchase exclusively at our UK gigs! So if you are planning to join us at one of our upcoming shows, don’t forget to pop over to the merch desk and grab yours while stocks still last.

The Ukes

 


The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is a group of all-singing, all-strumming Ukulele players, using instruments bought with loose change, which believes that all genres of music are available for reinterpretation, as long as they are played on the Ukulele.

A concert by the Ukulele Orchestra is a funny, virtuosic, twanging, awesome, foot-stomping obituary of rock-n-roll and melodious light entertainment featuring only the “bonsai guitar” and a menagerie of voices in a collision of post-punk performance and toe-tapping oldies. There are no drums, pianos, backing tracks or banjos, no pitch shifters or electronic trickery. Only an astonishing revelation of the rich palette of orchestration afforded by ukuleles and singing (and a bit of whistling). Audiences have a good time with the Ukulele Orchestra. Going from Tchaikovsky to Nirvana via Otis Redding and Spaghetti Western soundtracks, the Orchestra takes us on “a world tour with only hand luggage” and gives the listener “One Plucking Thing After Another”.

Using instruments small and large, in high and low registers, whether playing intricate melodies, simple tunes, or complex chords, and sitting in chamber group format dressed in formal evening wear, the Orchestra uses the limitations of the instrument to create a musical freedom as it reveals unsuspected musical insights. Both the beauty and vacuity of popular and highbrow music are highlighted, the pompous and the trivial, the moving and the amusing. Sometimes a foolish song can touch an audience more than high art; sometimes music which takes itself too seriously is revealed to be hilarious. You may never think about music in the same way once you’ve been exposed to the Ukes’ depraved musicology.


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