Ukulele Cabaret Chicago is the Windy City's answer to ukulele cabaret in other towns like New York and San Francisco. The next one is coming up in December, and the theme appears to be space travel. I wonder if I can work up an arrangement of Brian Dewan's "The Creatures" by then...
Windy City festival this weekJust a reminder that the Windy City Uke Fest happens next weekend. I won't be going because of the rather high prices ($95 for a complete fest pass? $25 per day?), but if you can afford it you might want to check it out.
I think the next festival that we'll be attending will be next year's Hula Conference on O'ahu. The majority of the events there will of course be dance-related, but we've heard rumors that there might be some music-related events happening at the same time. Plus, who wouldn't want to travel to O'ahu? More on this later.
New Chicago area festival!Just announced: The Windy City Uke Fest, which happens August 1-3 in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines. This is being put together by the Windy City Islanders guys, and they've already got an impressive list of performers and instructors. More info at the Website.
I was kinda hoping that the Midwest Ukulele Jam Festival guys would have gotten a second festival together for this year, but I haven't heard anything about it, so with those guys and also the Midwest Uke Fest guys not having anything going on this year I suspect this will be the main event for Chicago area uke players this year.
We are officially playing CerritosIf you check out the site for the Southern California Ukulele Festival you will see us mentioned in the uke club concert for Friday night. Well, you won't see us mentioned by name, but you will see a vague reference to a group from Chicago. That's us. Hopefully we will make a bit of a name for ourselves at the festival this year, so in the future we won't just be that group from Chicago.
Those of you in the Southern California area, come check us out. Friday, October 5 at the Cerritos Park East Community Center (13234 E. 166th Street) in Cerritos, California. Show starts at 5:30 PM; there will be food. I don't know when we'll be on.
Southern California plansThe Southern California Ukulele Festival recently posted a schedule of performers for this year's concert on their site. Included in the line-up: Bill Tapia, who turned 100 this year. We saw him at the 2005 festival, and he still looked pretty spry, so this concert should be exciting.
The festival also has ticket information available now. The complete enchilada, which includes the festival, luau-style dinner after the festival, and the evening concert, is just $45. That's not a bad price. Doesn't include travel expenses, though, which will obviously be more for us Chicago people. Get your tickets soon, California residents!
Chicagoland!
Photos here. It was a fun festival! There were loads of people coming through the festival all day long, and all of the acts were great. I can't say that I was happy with my own performance when we were on stage, but the hula dancers distracted everybody with their fine dancing, so that was good. People will remember the dancers.
The next performance is in three weeks, at the Folk & Roots Festival. See you there....
Festival Madness!In less than two weeks the first Chicagoland Ukulele Jam Festival kicks off. Like most events and organizations with "Chicagoland" in the name, it's not really happening in Chicago; it'll be at Legal Grounds Coffee in Maywood. Apparently you just take the Blue Line out to the Forest Park stop (aka "end of the line"), and then it's a couple of miles on the #317 Pace Bus.
And in four months we'll be attending the Southern California Ukulele Festival out in Cerritos once again. I just heard from the woman who's organizing the Friday night uke club concert, and found out that we still have time to submit our application for the concert. So I'll be sending that off this week, to be followed later on with all the other paperwork they need (group bio, pictures, stage requirements, etc.).
Chicagoland uke jamSpotted at 4th Peg: there's going to be a Chicago area ukulele festival in June. The Chicagoland Ukulele Jam Festival 2007 (mmm, ukulele jam) happens on June 23 at Legal Grounds Coffee in Maywood, west of Oak Park. I forwarded the info to the people in my class, so maybe we will attend. Class is also tonight*, so I'll mention it there as well. See you there, maybe?
*Class was in fact cancelled due to snow.
Midwest Ukefest reportLynn from the group The Fabulous Heftones has posted a summary of the Midwest Ukefest at her Weblog. I see a couple of our Chicago people in the photos! Woo hoo!
Speaking of Chicago uke players, tonight we resume uke classes after a week off. We've got a lot of ground to cover over the next few weeks before our holiday performance at the Museum of Science and Industry. They haven't posted a schedule for the holiday festivities, but our performance will be on Saturday, November 19 at 12:15 PM. Better come check us out!
Uke campout in Big SurAlong with the Midwest Ukefest happening this weekend, there's another festival happening: the 3rd annual Big Sur Ukulele Campout, put together by the Uke Club of Santa Cruz. See their site for more details on this.
We saw the Uke Club of Santa Cruz perform at the Southern California Uke Festival at the beginning of this month. They were good people. See the picture.
Hey, I'm still tweaking the CSS/HTML/PHP stuff, but the site officially live right now. I've started plugging the URL into various search engines and blog places, and will try to get the reamining stuff done this weekend, so I can make the formal announcement next week. And I know nobody's reading this right now, but someday you will be. Ha!
Midwest UkefestThe third annual Midwest Ukefest draws nigh. Two days of workshops and performances at the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis, with two evening concerts at the Masonic Temple. Ooh spooky!
Chicago is going to be represented by the Windy City Islanders at the festival. They'll be performing at the second evening's concert. They've also got a new CD out, which you should be able to pick up there. A couple members of my ukulele class will also be in attendance, so keep an eye out for Chicago people.