4th Annual Nutmeg Ukulele Festival

🌺Aloha! The Simsbury Meadows Performing Arts Center is excited to present the 4th annual Nutmeg Ukulele Festival hosted by the Kinetic Ukes!

This all day festival includes 3 workshop sessions, an artist showcase, a silent auction, vendors and lunch!

NEW to our artist line up this year is Uncle Zac - a renowned Baritone Ukulele instructor. Returning this year are four festival favorites: Anne Ku, Armand Aromin, Jim Beloff and Jim Lenn.

Registration opens at 8:00am. Group warmup begins at 9:00am. Workshop materials, day of instructions, and the festival schedule will be emailed to ticket holders the week of the event! Lunch will be provided but please feel free to BYO snacks and refreshments for your enjoyment for throughout the day!

Based in Boston, Massachusetts, Anne Ku believes that playing the ukulele is the fastest way to engage and connect through music. To this end, she gives ukulele, piano, and music theory classes using a curriculum she has developed and customized for her students. She hosts two online initiatives: 3 Chord Thursday (one-hour thematic song session) and professional development for ukulele instructors. Her current focus is publishing her original work for ukulele, an instrument she learned while teaching music at University of Hawaii Maui College. Anne holds music degrees from Utrecht Conservatory (Netherlands) and The Open University (UK).

In chronological order, Armand Aromin is a queer Filipino American musician, percussive dancer, singer, and violin maker now enmortgaged in Riverside, Rhode Island. More importantly, if you can say “Arm & Hammer” you’re pronouncing his name correctly! Like many who came before him, Armand’s ukulele journey, too, began with the Irish fiddle in high school. After a text message break up his senior year (he’s doing fine.) his heart told him, “The only way to heal is to stress-purchase a 5-string banjo.” And so he did. But while contentedly clawhammering his way through college, he beheld his first ukulele, and thus his eyes were truly opened. It was as if a banjo-shaped weight was lifted from his shoulders! Now, lo these many years, the clawhammer’s twang has graced/grazed many an ear with a growing repertoire of tunes and songs that continue to wonderfully confound the writer of this bio. Armand is one-half of The Vox Hunters, a quarter of Eight Feet Tall, and at least a third of The Ivy Leaf. He proudly owns Aromin Violins, a tiny workshop within five paces of his bedroom. He also regularly teaches private lessons at his home, as well as group classes at the Blackstone River Theatre in Cumberland, RI.

Jim Beloff is the author of The Ukulele—A Visual History (Backbeat Books) and author, arranger, and publisher of the Jumpin’ Jim’s series of ukulele songbooks with over 1,000,000 copies in print. This series is available worldwide and includes The Daily Ukulele, one of the biggest and best-selling ukulele songbooks ever published. All Jumpin’ Jim’s songbooks are distributed by Hal Leonard LLC. In December 2021, Backbeat books published Jim’s memoir, UKEtopia—Adventures in the Ukulele World. Jim produced Legends of Ukulele, a CD compilation for Rhino Records, and has made three how-to-play DVDs for Homespun. He is also an active songwriter and has released a number of CDs. His two-CD set, Dreams I Left in Pockets, features 33 songs he wrote or co-wrote with uke legends, Herb “Ohta-san” Ohta and Lyle Ritz. His most recent album, The Wind and Sun, was released in August 2020. In 1999, Jim composed and premiered Uke Can’t Be Serious, a concerto for solo ukulele and symphony orchestra. Since then, the piece has been performed with both high school and professional orchestras, including the Michigan Philharmonic in 2016. He has also performed it many times with a string quartet. His second concerto for ukulele and orchestra, The Dove Tale, premiered in 2017 with the Wallingford (Connecticut) Symphony Orchestra. Jim and his wife, Liz Maihock Beloff, own Flea Market Music, Inc., a company dedicated to the ukulele and they play their family’s Fluke, Flea and Firefly ukes. They have toured Japan, Australia and Canada and believe in their company’s motto, “Uke Can Change the World.” Visit Jim online: Here.

Jim Lenn grew up in southern California. Starting music at the age of eight and after hearing The Beatles at 12, he knew music would play a big part in his life. Upon relocating to the East Coast in 1999, Jim needed to travel for work and the friendly, portable ukulele became a mainstay of his travels. After being asked to teach ukulele for the Windsor Adult Education program in 2015 the New England Ukulele Ensemble was formed. Along with this larger ensemble the ukulele quartet Snapback was created and after opening for the Hartford Symphony, they released their well-received Christmas CD “Uke Tide Carols.” During this time Jim was also teaching ukulele for the Granby Library and a group in Simsbury. With the difficulties brought on by the Covid 19 Pandemic it was decided that all these groups could be brought together to form what is now the Kinetic Ukes performance ensemble. For the past 3 years Jim has directed the Kinetic Ukes based out of Simsbury, Connecticut. Besides performing solo acoustic shows throughout New England, Jim is involved in the James Hill Ukulele Initiative and is most happy when teaching and sharing the love of ukulele and music with anyone interested!

I am a local ukulele performer and teacher, and have played the uke for over 55 years. I have a wide range of styles and materials I perform and teach.
As a solo uke performer, at various venues from the Gershwin Hotel in NYC to local senior centers, I play music from Leon Redbone to Jimmy Buffett to Allan Sherman and more. Even though I am primarily a bari player, I never travel with only one uke because as Fred Fallin says, “each one has a different voice” which adds it’s own flavor to any song.
I have to give most of the credit to Uncle Tony, my teacher and mentor. Without him, I would have never been introduced to such an amazing instrument!

Host or Publisher Simsbury Meadows Performing Arts Center