Experience Ukulele
2025 Faculty
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.
Conrad Cayman
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.
Cathy Fink
Cathy Fink is a GRAMMY Award winning multi-instrumentalist and co-artistic director of Strathmore’s UkeFest with Marcy Marxer. She loves teaching all levels and has created a series of courses on playing Clawhammer Ukulele, kin to the old-time banjo style. Cathy has taught at countless music camps including Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, Midwest Ukefest, The Augusta Workshops, and Palm Springs Ukefest.…
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.…
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.…
Marcy Marxer
Marcy Marxer is a GRAMMY Award winning multi-instrumentalist who has been teaching ukulele since 1986. Her “Ukulele For Kids” online courses have brought up a few generations of young ukulele players. She has directed a seniors uke orchestra, taught at prominent Uke and Music Camps and is co-artistic director of Strathmore’s UkeFest. Marcy specializes in chord melody, swing and jazz uke, but plays a bit of everything!…
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.…
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.…
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”.…
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
Mike Lightnin’ Wells hails from North Carolina and has had a long time interest and fascination with the ukulele. His main interest is in the mainland style of uke which was made popular during the jazz age during the 1920s and he has a repertoire of over one hundred pieces originating from this era. He owns a family of at least a dozen vintage ukuleles of various sizes and shapes including banjo ukes and a tiple.…
CLASS DESCRIPTIONS
Class descriptions for 2025 will be posted before Halloween.
2025 Cost
Cost:
Tuition: $
Private Dorm Room: $
All Meals: $
Lunches Only (3): $
Scholarships
If you need financial assistance, Centrum has a robust scholarship program. Apply online as you register. Please note that except in rare cases, scholarships are available for tuition only. Centrum requires a deposit of scholarship applicants, which is fully refundable before March 23 if you are unable to attend.
Cancellation/Refund Policy
Full tuition is due upon registration, $50 of which is non-refundable. No refunds of any kind are available after April 9, 2025.
Room & Board
Most participants stay in private dormitory rooms at Fort Worden. There are a limited number of double rooms, that is, rooms with two twin beds. If you’d like a double, please request one, and list another registered participant who has signed up for room and board in order to share that room. It is first come, first served.
Meals are served at Fort Worden Commons.
Room and board final payment is due by April 9, 2025. We tend to run out of rooms as the workshop approaches, so if you’d like room and board we recommend signing up for it when you register.
If we haven’t answered all of the questions you may have, please contact Peter McCracken at 360-385-3102, x127, or peter@centrum (dot) org.
Skill Levels
Are the Ukulele Festival workshops appropriate for my skill level?
The Port Townsend Ukulele Festival is a gathering appropriate for advanced-beginner, intermediate, and advanced players. The word “beginner” covers a lot of ground. Most offerings at the workshop are geared towards people who know more than a few chords, and are capable of changing chords smoothly and in rhythm. In 2025 we are offering beginner level classes led by Marianne Brogan.
You’ll get the most out of your experience if you can do the following exercise in three different keys. Use a metronome!
At 60 beats per minute, play each chord four times (four beats per chord). Play the chords without diagrams, that is, by heart.
C – Am – F – G7 – C
It should take 20 seconds. Try it in these keys as well:
F – Dm – Bb – C7 – F
G – Em – C – D7 – G
If you can do this, then this workshop is for you! If you need to look up any of these chords, then you know what you have to work on (and master) before the festival starts.
FAQ
If we haven’t answered all of the questions you may have, please contact Peter McCracken at 360-385-3102, x127, or peter@centrum (dot) org.
If you are under 18...
Most of our workshops are family events, and we welcome musicians of all ages and abilities to participate. Our programming has annually evolved to meet the needs of very young musicians, and we devote considerable resources to this end.
If you are under 18, you must be accompanied by a registered adult. Please register the adult first, as you will need a confirmation number.
Schedule
General Schedule
Thursday, May 1, 20252pm: Shuttle departs from SeaTac Airport
4pm: Check-in starts at Fort Worden.
6pm: dinner
7:15pm: Late check-in at Wheeler Theater
7:30pm: Orientation/Welcome Session
Friday, Saturday, Sunday
9 - 10:15am: Choice of classes
10:45 – noon: Choice of classes
1:30 – 2:45: Choice of classes
3:15 – 4:15: Serendipity Hour
4:30 – 5:30: Open Mic
Evenings
7:30: Friday and Saturday - public shows in Wheeler Theater
Sunday - Party in the USO
Monday, May 5
8am: Breakfast
9am: Shuttle leaves Fort Worden for SeaTac Airport
11am: Must be out of housing
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