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Strathmore Ukulele Festival and Highlights of 2020

tonymizen

After the bad news that the Isle of Wight festival was cancelled for next year, where Paul Mansell and I were going to play, I was pleased to be invited to take part in the Strathmore virtual ukulele festival. This is going to happen on Friday 8th to Sunday 10th January 2021, involving workshops and recitals. Due to the time differences between the US and the UK, I will be submitting a video recital. I've synced the chosen pieces with the two workshops I'm doing. The first one will be about making difficult pieces easier through various approaches, and the second one is about keys, scales and modes. Both took me months to write and I'm looking forward to going ahead with them. The video includes two of the most difficult pieces in 'From Lute to Uke' and I've completely revised them to make them easier. More information can be found on the link below:


https://www.strathmore.org/events-and-tickets/uke-summit


In the last few weeks, I've been in contact with two brilliant musicians who are putting together books and CDs. I was honoured to be asked to write a foreword to them and also to be asked to write a modern piece for ukulele for a new CD. I am also going to self publish a book of my own ukulele compositions entitled: ARTHROPODA (creepy-crawlies for ukulele). The pieces are SPIDERS, WASPS, FLEAS, SCORPIONS, BUTTERFLIES, LADYBIRDS and ANTS. I will put free mp3's of each track here on my website. I have a friend working on the book cover. Some of the music is on youtube and I've had some good positive responses. I played 'Wasps' on my Strathmore video.


All of this has taken my mind off the Covid situation which is now creeping into my home area. Like everyone, I'm looking forward to the vaccine next spring! Have a safe Christmas!







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