[Dixielandjazz] The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

[Stephen G Barbone]

Apparently the UO of GB wowed them in NYC on Nov 2. Ya gotta love the  
tune selection and the stage antics.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

Cutting Up, Rocking Out and Jamming on Ukuleles
NY TIMES - By ALLAN KOZINN - November 4 2010


The most revelatory moment in the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s  
concert at Zankel Hall on Tuesday evening probably came during its  
performance of “Psycho Killer,” the Talking Heads song, when you  
realized that David Byrne had missed the boat by not recording the  
tune with an ensemble of singing ukulele players. Or maybe it was  
during the group’s gracefully sung, delicately plucked account of  
David Bowie’s “Life on Mars,” an idiosyncratic reading of an offbeat  
selection, even before it morphed into a handful of songs from  
entirely different universes: among them Stevie Wonder’s “For Once in  
My Life,” the theme song from “Born Free” and the Who’s “Substitute.”

Come to think of it, another Who song, “Pinball Wizard” — a natural  
for a ukulele ensemble, you might think, given the rapidly strummed  
introduction on the Who’s recording — yielded a greater surprise.  
Instead of playing the introduction, or any instrumental  
accompaniment, ensemble members put down their ukuleles and sang a  
richly harmonized a cappella backing to George Hinchliffe’s  
vaudevillian lead vocal.

Now in its 25th year, Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is really  
only an octet, and on Tuesday it was smaller still: with one player  
ill, the group performed as a septet. It was none the worse for that.  
Its musicians play ukuleles of different sizes and pitches, from  
soprano to bass, though Jonty Bankes’s electric bass ukulele looks a  
lot like a conventional bass guitar with a vaguely ukulelelike shape.

Physical comedy (at one point five players crowded together to play  
one uke), pun-filled banter between songs and stacks of fleeting  
musical allusions within each piece keep the orchestra’s show lively.  
Amid the gags — there are lots of yuks in ukes apparently — the band  
offered some finely nuanced playing, with beautifully shaped single- 
string solos by Mr. Hinchliffe and David Suich.

Perhaps because the ukulele has long been treated as a four-string  
mini-guitar for amateurs, only a handful of ukulelists have achieved  
much renown, most notably George Formby in Britain and Tiny Tim in the  
United States. But the instrument has a dedicated constituency. George  
Harrison was a devoted ukulelist: he periodically turned up, uke in  
hand, at meetings of the George Formby Society, and he is seen  
strumming the instrument in “The Beatles Anthology.” Younger musicians  
have taken to it as well. Julia Nunes, a 21-year-old player from  
upstate New York, has a huge following on YouTube, where her inventive  
version of the Foundations’ “Build Me Up Buttercup” has had nearly two  
million plays.

These British comedian harmonists are drawn mostly to rock oldies:  
their program included antiquities like Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be  
Wild” and the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.” — which they  
performed as a cheerful campfire song, complete with swaying — and  
comparatively recent songs like Wheatus’s “Teenage Dirtbag” and  
Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Lyrics were occasionally tweaked:  
in a version of Isaac Hayes’s soul classic “Shaft” the line “What’s  
the most important part of a coal mine, apart from coal” was added  
just before the refrain.

The set also touched on jazz, blues and comic spins on a few classical  
pieces, including a whistled version of the Badinerie from Bach’s B  
minor Orchestral Suite, all cleverly arranged and played with humor,  
energy and virtuosity