Saturday, April 27, 2013

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

Recently, I had the privilege of seeing this out of the ordinary orchestra consisting of eight Ukulele players from Great Britain called...The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

How eight Uke players found each other in Britain (or that there are eight Uke players in Great Britain) is, in itself, pretty amazing to me.

What surprised me even more was that the group has been playing since 1985 and has performed with as many as 12 members (and as few as six).

With eight Ukuleles ( a mix of 3 Concerts, 4 Sopranos, and one Bass Uke when I saw them, but they have used different combinations) they can produce some complicated compositions and even sound effects as displayed in their rendition of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.  They play all types of music including rock....like Nirvana's Smells Like Team Spirit. They are equal parts comedians and musicians....which makes them great to watch live. 

I saw them in the Holland Center in Omaha, NE which has some great acoustics (they sound amazingly better live than on youtube).  Some of the songs they performed that I can recall off the top of my head (it was a 2 hour show so there was a lot of songs performed) was Johnny Cash's Orange Blossom Special, the Talking Heads', Psycho Killer, Isiah Haye's Shaft, David Bowie's Life on Mars, the Sex Pistols' Anarchy, and the theme from the Beverly Hillbilly's...as you can see all over the musical genre map.  They even performed a medley of pop songs displaying their vocal talents by singing them individually, then combining them one by one until they were singing simultaneously (like how you sang Row, Row, Row Your Boat in grade school, only in their case it was 5 different songs instead of one). 

I came out of the Holland with a big smile on my face and we talked about the different performances throughout the entire drive home.  I would highly recommend seeing them if you get the chance.

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