- The results are being filtered by the department: Ukulele
Ukulenny
Ukulenny is an ukulele performer and educator based in Oakland, CA. He received his musical training from UC Berkeley and CSU East Bay, and taught choir and orchestra for 5 years before becoming a full time musician. After spending the first half of his life studying various instruments, piano, guitar, cello, saxophone, he fell in love with the ukulele in 2009 and began a new musical journey.…
Brook Adams
Past Faculty
Brook is an atavistic dinosaur of 20th century pop. His songs evoke a timeless blend of soul, surf & psychedelia. He is a skilled player on guitar and ukulele.
Marianne Brogan
Marianne Brogan grew up in a musical family and played flute, piano, guitar and drums. In middle age she found her instrument – the ukulele – and that was that.
She founded the Portland (Oregon) Ukulele Association in 2001, and has been happily teaching ukulele, and organizing events for well over a decade.
Jere Canote
Washington
Jere Canote is a teacher, musician, and luthier. Since the mid seventies, Jere has honed his skills playing old time country, swing, and novelty songs on guitar, banjo and ukulele. Jere has recorded many projects with his twin brother Greg, including “Uke Snack” (old time tunes and songs), and “Uke Life” (clawhammer and flat picked Uke).…
Jere and Greg Canote
Jere and Greg Canote are as renowned for their affable attitudes and humor as they are for their music. Greg on fiddle, and Jere on guitar, and both on banjo ukes, perform zany concerts, play for dances, lead songs, and promote a good time. The twin brothers started singing soon after they were born and haven’t closed their mouths since.…
Conrad Cayman
Ukulele
Conrad Cayman is a Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist who teaches and plays ukulele (tenor, baritone, and U-bass), and also performs on guitar, plectrum banjo, and bass (upright and electric). An artist for Ohana Ukuleles, Conrad has performed at the Los Angeles Ukulele Festival and UkeCon San Diego, and taught and performed at the Reno Ukulele Festival and the Centrum Foundation’s Acoustic Blues Festival in Port Townsend, WA.…
Neal Chin
Award winning artist and Maui, HI native Neal Chin, has been both an ‘ukulele educator and performer over the course of his musical career. His clear and direct enthusiasm for music has come to life in countless workshops, concerts, and private instruction. While his heart is in jazz, Neal has played with many musicians of different genres including Hawaiian, folk, rock, and hip-hop.…
Nova Karina Devonie
Nova Karina Devonie hails originally from Vancouver, B.C. She has been delighting audiences with her sensitive (and sometimes humorous) accordion playing, sonorous singing style, and sideways fashion sense since the 1980’s.
Steven Espaniola
It’s rare when an artist arrives on the scene offering a refreshing new spin on a traditional genre of music. Nā Hōkū Hanohano nominated Steven Espaniola is that artist. Raised in Aliamanu, Hawai’i and now residing in the California Bay Area, Steven is a self taught multi-instrumentalist Hawaiian artist specializing in Ki Ho’alu (Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar), ‘Ukulele, Upright Bass, and Leo Ki’e Ki’e (Traditional Hawaiian falsetto).…
Cathy Fink
Two-time Grammy Award Winners, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer are master musicians with a career spanning over 35 years. Their superb harmonies are backed by instrumental virtuosity on the guitar, five-string banjo, ukulele, mandolin, cello-banjo, and many other instruments. An eclectic folk festival on their own terms, their repertoire ranges from classic country to western swing, gypsy jazz to bluegrass, and old-time string band to contemporary folk including some original gems.…
Avery Hill
Avery Hill is a life-long musician, trained educator, and performing singer-songwriter. She began teaching music in 2013, and quickly became a staple instructor of the Portland (OR) ‘ukulele community. Over the years, she has led ‘ukulele classes, workshops, and jams that focus on building valuable skills, deepening oneʻs sense of musicality, and appreciating the place of music within our greater culture and history.…
Daniel Ho
Past Faculty
From his simple beginnings in Honolulu to his life amid the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles, Daniel Ho has worked over the years as a musician, producer, singer/songwriter, arranger, composer, engineer, and record company owner. The most compelling of these roles has been as a six-time GRAMMY Award winning producer, featured slack key guitarist, and artist in the “Best Hawaiian Music Album,” “Best Pop Instrumental Album,” and “Best World Music Album” categories.
Kelle Jolly
Kelle Jolly—known as the “Tennessee Ukulele Lady”—is a celebrated musician, vocalist, and storyteller who blends academic training with lived artistry. A graduate of South Carolina State University (B.S. in Music Education) and East Tennessee State University (M.A. in Communication and Storytelling Studies), she has become a leading voice in Appalachian music and culture.
Kelle is the founder of the Women in Jazz Jam Festival and Ukesphere of Knoxville Ukulele Club, and her career spans international tours, theater productions, festival stages, and film soundtracks.…
Aaron and Nicole Keim
Co-Artistic Directors
The Quiet American is husband and wife duo, Aaron and Nicole Keim. In Hood River, Oregon, they live an artistic life: making music, building musical instruments, teaching music, writing books, crafting folk art,and raising their 10-year-old son Henry. Their connection to folk tradition is undeniable, even as they find new ways to sing old songs and incorporate music and art into their teaching and performing.…
Victoria Kolasinski
Victoria “Viggy” Kolasinski is a fingerstyle ukulele player/teacher born and raised on Long Island, New York. Under the username @jiggywithviggy, Viggy makes fun and kinetic ukulele tutorials on her social media pages and has grown a cumulative audience of over 300k followers! She’s been playing the uke for 10 years and teaching private lessons, workshops, live shows, and online for four of those years, bringing with her a youthful energy and her silly stage presence.…
Rachel Manke
Past Faculty
Rachel Manke has been playing the ukulele for over 20 years. It’s the passion that has fueled adventure and friendships in her life. She is a skilled player in a vaudeville vein who has taken flourish and technique from that stage into various genres.
Marcy Marxer
Two-time Grammy Award Winners, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer are master musicians with a career spanning over 35 years. Their superb harmonies are backed by instrumental virtuosity on the guitar, five-string banjo, ukulele, mandolin, cello-banjo, and many other instruments. An eclectic folk festival on their own terms, their repertoire ranges from classic country to western swing, gypsy jazz to bluegrass, and old-time string band to contemporary folk including some original gems.…
Ronnie Ontiveros
Ronnie Ontiveros lives in Hood River, Oregon and plays bass in about 8 different bands. He also plays guitar and uke and has appeared at many festivals, camps and musical happenings around the Northwest over the last several years. He is usually very serious and rigid about all things, however if you catch him in a good mood he may even smile and make a low key attempt at humor.…
Jeff Peterson
Born on the Island of Maui, two-time Grammy Award nominee and fourteen-time Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award winner Jeff Peterson grew up on the slopes of Haleakalā where he was introduced to the rich heritage of Hawaiian music by his father, a paniolo, or Hawaiian cowboy, on the Haleakalā Ranch. He went on to study guitar and music composition at the University of Southern California and the University of Hawaiʻi in Mānoa.…
Del Rey
Faculty
Del Rey started playing guitar when she was four years old. At thirteen, she was immersed in the world of folk music, via the San Diego Folk Festival. She has tried to get a whole band onto her solo instrument from the beginning. This gives her music an interesting complexity, especially when applied to the ukulele.
Danielle Ate The Sandwich
Danielle Ate the Sandwich is the stage name of folk singer songwriter and ukulele player, Danielle Anderson (she/her). Combining soft, lilting vocals with poignant honesty and wit, Danielle writes songs for the biggest and smallest moments of life. She first found her place at open mic nights and coffee shops in Fort Collins, Colorado, and is now based in Kansas City, MO.…
Heidi Swedberg
When she was 5 years old Heidi received her first ukulele from the Hawaiian Easter bunny while living in Kailua, HI. She has fond memories of teaching herself chords and writing songs in her room in Albuquerque NM, the place she thinks of as home. She picked the instrument up again in 1992 in Hollywood, CA while playing a singer-songwriter for a network TV pilot. Now life imitates art, and she plays music full time.
Bryan Tolentino
‘Ukulele player, Bryan Tolentino has been known for the past forty plus years as an accompanist and soloist who has performed locally and abroad with some of Hawaiʻi’s most well known and accomplished music artists. Bryan’s recorded on over 60 CD’s for other artists as well as compilations adding his unique “fairy dusting”, as he calls it.…
Victoria Vox
Victoria Vox is an award-winning, ukulele-toting songwriter and one-woman powerhouse whose musical journey began at age 10. Since embracing the ukulele in 2003 and adopting the name Victoria Vox—Latin for “voice”—she has cultivated a sound that blends chanson, jazz-infused pop, and indie folk, establishing herself as a dynamic force in the ukulele community. Her performances are a celebration of creativity and emotion, enchanting audiences with music that feels both intimate and expansive.
Daniel Ward
Daniel Ward’s polymath approach is born from his passion and appetite for the diversity of music. Born in Los Alamos, NM to a nuclear chemist/conductor, he holds degrees in classical guitar and composition from the University of New Mexico. As a performer and composer, his work spans a wide ranging gamut: flamenco guitar, heavy metal, virtuosic ukulele, classical string quartets and four-hands piano pieces, kid’s music, jazz, commercial jingles, film soundtracks… he has what musicians call “big ears”.…
Daniel Ward
Daniel Ward is an accomplished musician, composer and educator, who has become one of the country’s top clinicians and performers on the ‘ukulele circuit’. He is known for his command of Latin styles and teaches right hand techniques, adapting his style and knowledge from the classical and flamenco guitar.
Matt Weiner
Big tone and solid rhythm have made Matt Weiner one of the busiest bass players in the Northwest. Inspired by the “prebop” bass players and their music, he’s slapping out a syncopated jazz feel on one tune, on another bowing a folksy melody.
Lightnin’ Wells
Ukulele, Guitar
Mike “Lightnin'” Wells breathes new life into the vintage tunes of the 1920s and depression era America employing various appropriate stringed instruments in a dynamic style which he has developed in over 50 years of performing experience. Raised in eastern North Carolina, Wells learned to play harmonica as a young child and taught himself to play the guitar as he developed a strong interest in traditional blues and folk music.…
Larry Wyatt
Larry Wyatt is a recently retired Elementary Music Specialist from Hood River, Oregon. He is also a Level 3 certified instructor of James Hill Ukulele initiative who has taught Ukulele at the JHUI in Vancouver B.C. He wore out his parents Waylon Jennings’ records and got whupped for it, so he turned his attention to the Buck Owens catalog and wore vinyl ruts in those too.…