JAMES HILL GIVES A WORKSHOP AT INDIAN RIVER

James and Anne practising for their Indian River evening on the deck at Heidi and Rob's home

About 20-25 PEI ukulele players were treated to a workshop by James Hill at Indian River Church last Saturday afternoon, August 25..James, along with Anne Davison(Janelle) on cello, provided a most interesting hour or so of new and fun things to do on the fretboard of our ukuleles. In his words: "The ukulele is an easy instrument to learn to play, and many start out learning to chord and strum where there is a steep learning curve for a short while but then it quickly levels off".  "As a result, interest  wanes because the player is not advancing in new skills and learning". James taught us some inversion chords and we spent time doing a  "Premiere Performance" of "All Night Long" from his Ukulele in the Classroom book. James then spent some time explaining the value of jazz chords and the great sound that comes from incorporating some of them into well known classics like "Sway" which we all gave a try. The time finished up with James and Anne doing a selection for us from a previous performance "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" A fabulous ending to a great workshop. Those of you who were able to make the evening performance of James and Anne I understand were thrilled at the variety of entertainment they provided. Unfortunately a previous commitment prevented us from making it. We give thanks to Heidi Litke for providing the photos you see here.....she took a ton of them. I'm sorry you can't double click to enlarge them, because this can't be done with the small resolution.I hope Heidi might use her influence to persuade James and Anne to do something like this again on PEI in the future.