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News
The latest news from The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain
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Sweden Tour Postponed
It is with regret that we have to announce the postponement of the 2022 Sweden tour. The ongoing situation with the global pandemic and changing restrictions mean we have had to take the difficult decision to postpone shows.We are devastated COVID-19 will prevent us from seeing our fans in Sweden. We have rescheduled the shows for October 2023, all tickets will be valid for the new shows. If you are unable to make the new date then please contact the venue you bought the ticket from for a refund.Do bear in mind that venues continue to be operating under a lot of pressure and will be doing their best to send out information and respond to queries, so please be considerate of their staff.New dates:Sat 14 Oct UKK, UppsalaSun 15 Oct Scala, StockholmMon 16 Oct Gävle Konserthus -
"One Plucking Thing After Another" The New UOGB Album
The UOGB has been performing for over 36 years, longer than the Beatles and Led Zeppelin combined. It’s had more gigs than the Rolling Stones and has covered more genres than Beyoncé and the Berlin Philharmonic. The live experience of the orchestra has been a major draw with sold-out audiences for decades. The orchestra has proven itself in bars, concert halls, opera houses, cathedrals and at major rock festivals across the globe by hitting the strings - all thirty-two of them - and singing. Except in "The Old Home Place" where the applause is also in response to Ewan’s Appalachian clog dancing expertise.Also on this CD is music from the Pink Panther, a Chinese heavy-metal song by Black Panther, and ballet music by Prokofiev. The medley “Woo Woo/Yeah Yeah/Rockin’ Goose” combines in one track three catchy vintage hits, in a journey from Tokyo to Toledo via Edinburgh. The bonus track “Something’ Stupid” revisits the hit made famous by Frank Sinatra and his daughter Nancy, in this case with George and Laura, the oldest and the youngest performers in the UOGB. “On the Road Again” could be the Orchestra’s theme song. Like donkey in Shrek, like Willie Nelson, the music is time honoured.The orchestra is a relentless machine delivering entertainment, fun and humour.It uses only ukuleles.What can you expect from the UOGB?The answer is simple: One Plucking Thing After Another. -
2022 North America Dates
We will be heading back across the pond to North America in spring 2022! Join us for a funny, virtuosic, twanging, awesome, foot-stomping show.
Fri 18 Mar - Lied Center for Performing Arts, NE - Tickets
Sun 20 Mar - Snoqualmie Casino, WA - Tickets
Mon 21 Mar - McCallum Theatre, CA - Tickets
Thu 24 Mar - Herbst Theatre, CA - Tickets
Fri 25 Mar - The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, CA - Tickets
Sat 26 Mar - The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, CA - Tickets
Sun 27 Mar - Irvine Barclay Theatre, CA - Tickets
Tue 29 Mar - Goodwood Museum and Gardens, FL - Tickets
Thu 31 Mar - Wisconsin Union Theatre, WI - Tickets
Fri 1 Apr - Sharon Lynn Wilson Center, WI - Tickets
Sun 3 Apr - Hugh Hodgson Concert Hall, GA - Tickets
Tue 5 Apr - Lafayette College, PA - Tickets
Thu 7 Apr - Sharon L Morse PAC, FL - Tickets
Fri 8 Apr - Curtis M Phillips Center for Performing Arts, FL - Tickets
Sat 9 Apr - Spivey Hall, GA - Tickets
Sun 10 Apr - Weis Center for the Performing Arts, PA - Tickets
Tue 12 Apr - Wharton Center for Performing Arts, MI - Tickets
To be alerted when we announce to play in your area and request for us to play in your city you can track us on Bandsintown.
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Shock news item; use of ukuleles in schools has rocketed.
Over the last few days the UOGB has been asked by various newspapers, radio stations and online news organisation to comment on a news item concerning the ukulele.
News stories that use of the ukulele has “outstripped the recorder” in schools have been around for many years, along with periodic “shock” announcements that sales of ukuleles are said to be greater than those of guitars. The current flurry of news items prompted by the recent Associated Board report says similar things. (see below)
In fact the report reveals something more interesting. It appears that not only are ukuleles increasingly used in schools for ensemble playing and teaching (as recorders have traditionally been used), but the ukulele also appears in top ten list of instruments chosen by individuals themselves, regardless of what the school provides.
It is possible that cuts in arts funding for schools resulting in fewer dedicated music teachers has resulted in schools keeping at least some music going by means of teachers of other subjects, who have a personal enthusiasm for music, taking over the task of organising group ukulele classes. These may have taken the place of other activities with other instruments.
The UOGB’s popularising of the concept of an ensemble of ukuleles since the 1980s is suggested by many as the reason for the popularity of all-ukulele groups with children, seniors and music enthusiasts. In the 1980s there were no known all-ukulele ensembles.
The UOGB on its ongoing “world tour with only hand luggage” now encounters thousands of ukulele groups worldwide including ones the performers have met in the UK, USA, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Czech Republic, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, China, Japan, Poland, and even Svalbard.
The Orchestra has arranged special concerts for school and other groups, illustrated lectures on its methods, workshops and play-alongs in theatres, schools and indeed stadiums full of children, all over the world, in addition to its regular concerts.
Large scale ukulele manufacturers as well as individual ukulele builders in various countries have said that the UOGB’s concerts and online presence has been a major influence on the popularity of the instrument, a direct increase in trade sales of the instrument, and has had a significant effect on music retail worldwide, leading to the expansion of new income streams for many music shops because of the increased demand for ukuleles.
The ukulele can be an affordable option for music makers and schools. The UOGB has purchased and donated to schools ukuleles in quantity in order to facilitate group music making and teaching. Of course this requires there to be teachers in the school able to offer ukulele tuition.
All kinds of music can of course be played on the ukulele. The interesting thing about ensemble playing is that an arrangement or orchestration in which each individual instrument plays something different, rather than all the instruments playing the same thing, enables more complicated music to be made in combination, sometimes using only individual components which are in themselves simple to play. This enables popular and classical music with different parts to be re-created but with an all-ukulele ensemble.
This sort of activity can be traced back through a social history which might include the early days of rock and roll, via skiffle, spasm bands, jug bands and “house music” ensembles, Gebrauchsmusik, Toy Symphonies, the social popularity of chests of viols, plucked instruments in barber’s shops and Thomas Morley’s “Consort Lessons”.
Whether we call it a ukulele, a ngoni, a liuqin, a setar or a citole, a plucked chordophone with four strings has been in use all over the world for a long time.
One cannot however forget the appeal of the “group thrash” at George Formby Society meetings where massed ranks of ukulele-banjo players, all simultaneously using the time-honoured split-stroke technique, demonstrate the effectiveness of all the instruments in unison playing the same thing at the same time. As an effect it can be stirring, but in a concert such an effect would perhaps only be used as one part of the light and shade of varied volumes and textures.
The debate about whether the guitar is better than the ukulele tends to evaporate when one recalls that the renaissance guitar was effectively a ukulele under a different name, and that the addition of extra strings led to the use of the guitar with five strings for a long period of time, the Russian guitar with seven strings and the more familiar guitar with six strings of either nylon or metal which we find in classical and popular music.
The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music has a new report out on use of instruments and on music teaching. It found that the use of ukulele in classrooms has risen to 15%, that the instrument is often used for whole class ensemble teaching, and that the instrument is one of the 10 most chosen individual instruments by adults and children, boys and girls (as opposed to instruments offered in schools for ensemble teaching).
The report is available to download here.
The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain has been playing “one plucking thing after another” since 1985 and has had sold out gigs from Laramie to Hiroshima, from Berlin to Shanghai, from the Glastonbury festival to Carnegie Hall, from Filthy McNasty’s crowded bar to Buckingham Palace, from Sydney Opera House to The Royal Albert Hall and St Martin in the Fields.
It has organised play-alongs with up to more than 1,000 participants at a time, at workshops for children in the UK, USA and New Zealand.
Reducing arts provision in schools is thought by many educationalists to be a false economy in that whether a student goes on to work in business, science or theatre for example, the experience of making music with others is good training for listening, working with others and being sensitive at all levels. All work is creative, all work requires delicacy and interaction; and the neural pathways which music making opens up enable the skills and benefits which are needed in all areas of work and life to flourish.
Claude Bernard, the French physiologist, said that “Art is I; science is we”, but one might go further and say that an ensemble of ukuleles (like some other activities) is a social activity, a group effort, a meeting of technique, group dynamics, art, diplomacy and democracy. These are good things for students and music makers to experience and become habituated to.