Performers
Wukulele Festival presents a unique programme of international ukulele genius:
Bob Brozman
Bob Brozman (USA) has been called a "walking archive of 20th Century
American music". Voted "Best World Guitarist" in Guitar Player Magazine's
2010 Readers' Choice Awards, Bob is a prolific recording artist,
performer, producer, and author, a non-stop world traveler and tireless
researcher in ethnomusicology. Bob was voted "Best Acoustic Slide
Guitarist" by Acoustic Guitar
Magazine's Players'
Choice Award voters in 2009 - and as you would expect from this
legend of world music, he is an astonishing ukulele virtuoso.
http://www.bobbrozman.com/
Photo of Bob
Brozman by Ali Madjdi
Richard Durrant
Richard Durrant (UK) was given a banjolele for his 8th birthday,
receiving a ukulele some thirty years later from George Hinchliffe as a
thank you for his work producing the album “The Secret of Life” by the
Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. The ukulele features in all
Richard’s concert work, perfect for performing unaccompanied Bach.
Richard wrote the ukulele music for BBC1’s Skating Penguins logo
as well as uking his way through a 26 episode cartoon series
“Metalheads” for CBBC. Alongside his busy touring schedule Richard
gives ukulele demos and workshops at schools throughout the UK. He is
best known for his solo performances as “The Guitar Whisperer,” centred
around the classical guitar in collaboration with visual artists, often
using digital media.
http://www.richard-durrant.com
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The Half Sisters
The Half Sisters (UK) are sisters Isadora and Freya-Rose and their best friend Fifi. They are equally at home in the concert hall or busking the streets of Brighton. Ukulele, accordion, flute and drums combine with three part vocal harmonies to create songs of electrifying fun and infectious charm. The Half Sisters' world is one of celebration, honesty and love in which a disarming sense of self-confidence and vivacious on-stage presence is underpinned by melodic sophistication and a savvy attitude to both pop and folk forms.http://www.thehalfsisters.com __________________________________________________________________________
Sophie Madeleine
Sophie Madeleine (UK) is one of the few people in the world who can
claim to be a "Master of Song", having graduated from the MA
Songwriting Course at Bath Spa University. With influences as diverse
as Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Burt Bacharach, the Beatles, Feist and
Aimee Mann, Sophie is a singer with an exquisite ear for melody for
whom the ukulele's idiosyncratic charms provide the perfect complement
to her own highly engaging skills as a performer.
http://www.myspace.com/sophiemadeleine
The Bobby McGees
The Bobby McGees (UK) are a quartet of Brighton-based anti-folk
musicians who have impressed UK and Hong Kong audiences with their
exhilarating and wildly original live shows. Described as "Dostoyevsky
doing skiffle" by Everett True in Plan
B and like "a
domestic in a Glasgow boozer, but with ukuleles" by Rory Mackie in Clash Magazine, the Bobby McGees
have been featured by Channel 4's Film Four and have recently been
commissioned by Chevrolet.
http://www.myspace.com/thebobbymcgees
Sean O'HaganSean O'Hagan (UK) is co-founder and writer in the High Llamas, a group which seeks to find the common ground between 60's European soundtrack, musique concrete and The Beach Boys. Sean is also a major collaborator with Stereolab, The Coral and Super Furry Animals. His first venture into music was as co-founder and co-writer of Microdisney which gained world-wide cult status throughout the late 1980s. Since then he has toured worldwide and is currently collaborating with Belgian artist Jean Pierre Miller to produce the Musical Painting and Musical Wheel.
Sean is composer of the School Ukulele Commission at Wukulele
Festival,
supported by PRS
for Music.
http://www.highllamas.com
The Re-entrants
The Re-entrants (UK) formed in 2007 when near neighbours Phil Doleman and Ian Emmerson met through Ukulele Cosmos, the online ukulele forum. Since then they have become one of the most in-demand ukulele acts in the country. Phil was the banjo player with chart-toppers 4-4-2 with whom he appeared on Top Of The Pops and CD:UK. Ian is a former rock musician and multi-instrumentalist who has decided latterly to concentrate solely on the ukulele. Both have released several solo albums.http://www.thereentrants.co.uk
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U.K.E.
U.K.E. (France) is the duo of ukulele maverick Lionel K. Hubert
("the K") and percussionist Josh. With his roots in jazz and metal,
Lionel is currently the assistant of cult minimalist composer
Charlemagne Palestine and creator of the prestigious Paris Uke Fest. On
a quest to search for and explore "new ukulele sounds", U.K.E. uses
electronic real-time treatment to expand the instrument into uncharted
experimental territories.http://www.myspace.com/ukeduet
Supported by bureauexport
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The Uke Box
The Uke Box (Holland) brings together Shelley Rickey from
Mississippi, and Marko van der Horst and Rene 'Polygoon' Verberne from
the Netherlands. Purveyors of
"Melodramatic Popular Song," they host a monthly Ukulele Jamboree in
Rotterdam and tour with a Jumping Flea Market of musical curiosities
and wonders. The Uke Box make and build their own instruments from
recycled materials and they perform on cigarbox uke, singing saw, toy
piano, washtub bass, and child prodigy midget accordion.
http://www.ukulele-interventie.blogspot.com
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Ukulelezaza
Ukulelezaza (Belgium) is Remco Houtman-Janssen, Ghent's answer to
Roy Smeck, and an organiser of Belgium Ukulele Festival. A dazzling
virtuoso with a vast collection of vintage instruments and a breadth of
knowledge to match, he draws on ragtime, the
Hawaiian masters and in particular British ukulele players like Peter
Moss, George
Formby, Billy Uke Scott and Steve Helme. Ukulelezaza's act includes as
many
different styles of playing as there are types of ukulele in his
collection.
http://www.youtube.com/ukulelezaza
Yan Yalego
Yan Yalego (France) has been playing blues, folk, primitive jazz and
French chanson for over 20 years. Well known in the international
ukulele community, he has toured widely
including on Ukulele Safari with Bosko &
Honey. His Ukulele Kitchen Party is a home performance
which takes place in people's kitchens, driving them into a "swamp in
the moonlight" ambience. For
Wukulele he swaps dreams of wide open spaces and
phantasmagorical forays into heady soundscapes for the down-home
exotica of Worthing.
http://www.yalego.org
Supported by bureauexport