Ukulele Challenge benefits Ukuleles for Peace tonight!

What happens when you mix a bunch of ukulele players, a bunch of great local musicians inspired to pick up a uke, a supportive music store, a cool club, and a fantastic cause? Find out tonight at Pinhook in downtown Durham.

First, the basics:
Tonight, Friday, May 15th
Pinhook - 117 Main Street, Durham
10 p.m. - Durham Ukulele Orchestra plays first!

Now, from the Ukulele Challenge blog:

With the generous help of High Strung Violins and Guitars of Durham, we challenged local musicians to break out of the confines of their normally gigantic instruments and have fun experimenting with the versatile, forgiving, beautiful, goofy, sad, bright, recession-proof, every person's instrument that is the UKULELE!

The result? LET'S GET SMALL!: A Ukulele Challenge and Benefit Concert! It'll be an 8 act line-up of fancy and not-so-fancy panted musicians from the area, each plying their trade to "The Tiny Art" at the Pinhook on Friday May15th, in what promises to be a hot damn grab bag of genres, original tunes, cover tunes, original cover tunes, and other noises. There will be ukes of all kinds, accompanying instruments of all flavors... (read more here)

Also, check out this great article in this week's Independent Weekly.

All proceeds will benefit Ukuleles For Peace, a small non-profit children's ukulele orchestra based in Central Israel that brings together Arab Palestinian kids and Jewish kids, with the broader purpose of fostering a sense of connection and shared community between Jewish and Palestinian families in the region. We're asking for suggested donations at the door of $5 for this event, but anything you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Come on out and support local musicians and their ukuleles!

Uke jam tonight; Thanks to High Strung

It was great to see a lot of uke jam faces at the Jake Shimabukuro show on Thursday night. What a musician, huh?! I loved the comment by a young audience member when asked if she was going to learn to play like Jake: "Are you kidding? I can't even fake move my hands that fast!" I can't either, but still I'm more inspired than ever to play more and to find ways to bring out the beauty of my little ukulele.

To that end, come play with us at the uke jam tonight. Bring songs. Bring ideas! We can always look up songs on the ol' net and print them out.

Special thanks Lee and Christine at High Strung for making tickets to Jake's show available on Thursday. I'm glad some of you got to use them. For anyone else who missed the show, I recommend taking a listen to Jake Shimabukuro's Live CD.