Spring into Uke with Stuart Fuchs, Ken Luk, & Ron Gordon
Saturday, May 10 starting at 10:00 am
All-day Ukulele Intensive. Open to ALL LEVELS of player — beginner to advanced!
Stu Fuchs is a lifelong musician, award-winning teaching artist blending mindfulness practice and creative play. He has performed gypsy jazz guitar with symphony orchestras and facilitated holistic music clinics worldwide. Stu was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for his work bringing healing music to cancer patients. He recorded and toured with renowned sacred chant artist Snatam Kaur, playing on her “Best New Age” Grammy award nominated album “Beloved”.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Ken Luk is a classically trained performer and teacher based in Rochester, New York. Through his love of the Brazilian choro and the cavaquinho, Ken slowly uncovers the connection between the vast families of small plucked string instruments: the machete and rajão from Madeira, the cuk and cak from Indonesia, and the ukulele from Hawaii. Apart from the guitar and mandolin, Ken enjoys playing his own arrangements and compositions on the ukulele. Ken teaches at the Eastman Community Music School, SUNY Geneseo, and Alfred University.
stufuchs.com | kenlukmusic.com | learnyourfrets.com
Register
The workshop will be held in person at the Old Songs building (37 S Main in Voorheesville).
Schedule
- 9:30 am — Doors open, participant check-in.
- 10:15 am — Introductions
- 10:30 am — Workshops — Session 1
- 11:30 am — Lunch Out (of the building)
- 1:00 pm — Workshops — Session 2
- 2:45 pm — Workshops — Session 3
- 4:15 pm — Concert: A brief sampler from each teacher/performer
- 5:30 pm — Everybody go home and practice!
Workshop Descriptions
Ukulele Zen with Stu Fuchs: In this workshop Stu shares accessible techniques from yoga, mindfulness meditation & qigong to help make your ukulele playing easier and cultivate a stress-free, joyful approach to your music making. As we play together you’ll be nourishing your body, mind & spirit. Strum songs, sing & pick melodies for easy and uplifting songs in a supportive and playful atmosphere. Through deep listening and relaxed attention, you may even become “One with the Strum!”
Ergonomic Ukulele Fingerpicking with Stu Fuchs: Fingerpicking on the ukulele is a beautiful technique to accompany songs & play solo repertoire. In this workshop Stu will de-mystify finger style, sharing tips and secret techniques he’s learned over a lifetime of classical and finger style guitar study. You’ll learn useful picking patterns to accompanying your songs and serve as a foundation for solo arrangement playing. We’ll be making music with these patterns, playing fun and easy-to-learn songs. In addition Stu will also share some great practice tips, exercises and shortcuts that he has used for decades. You’ll learn to a clear path develop effortless finger style technique, improve finger dexterity and create a beautiful tone.
Spicing up the Blues with Ken Luk: Everybody gets the blues now and again. It’s helped folks to sing about it for a long time. Even the bouncy uke can help us out here! We will go over some licks and rhythmic ideas to embellish blues progressions.
Creating a Simple Chord Melody arrangement with Ken Luk: we will use a few popular tunes to go over strategies to make a chord melody arrangement, which incorporates the melody of the song or tune into the chord shapes up and down the neck.
Essential Strums with Ron Gordon: great for beginners, and those wanting to organize their rhythm on the uke. We’ll use some classic songs to learn and review the basic one finger strum, the thumb drag and roll, damping strum, syncopation, and the triplet. Your creative part? Combining these into your own patterns!
Ukulele Ike’s Classics with Ron Gordon: Cliff Edwards, AKA Ike, was a great ukulele and jazz vocalist innovator. He made over 200 recordings, was in many motion pictures, and a star on the Broadway stage in the 1920’s. We’ll learn some of his great songs, and how he created novel strumming rhythms that really drove his music. You too can sing “For No Good Reason At All”!