Nutmeg Jam

🌺Aloha! On the eve of the 3rd Annual Nutmeg Ukulele Festival, we welcome you to a unique and intimate experience. Meet and greet festival participants and the 2024 festival teaching artists! Artists in attendance will include Anne Ku, Abby Lyons, Armand Aromin, and Jim Lenn. A buffet dinner of chicken, meatballs, pasta, soft drinks and wine will be included with your ticket purchase. Bring your music stand and ukulele for an informal jam and open mic opportunities! Network, socialize and make some music with us! All for only $25 (plus EventBrite fees).

Abby Lyons is a singer-songwriter with a following of over 75k subscribers on YouTube, where she shares her original songs, covers, and music tutorials. She is recording her third studio album of original songs, which was funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised over $10k. The release date for the third album is set for September 2024. She has performed and taught workshops at many venues and festivals, including the Los Angeles International Ukulele Festival, UkeCon, the Wonderfront Festival, and the Square Roots Festival. Lyons is also known for her ukulele playing and teaching as an instructor on the Fender Play platform. Behind the scenes, she wrote hundreds of lessons and assisted incurriculum design. Currently she teaches ukulele, songwriting, and piano at the legendaryOld Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. Lyons also records vocals for Grammy Award-winning film composer, Lorne Balfe, and her singing can be heard most prominently on the shows, Life On Our Planet with Morgan Freeman on Netflix and The Wheel Of Time on Amazon Prime. Other work in television includes writing the lyrics for the song, “Candlesticks and Caravans,” which is featured on the British crime show Pennyworth. Her original song, “Nightmare in the Morning,” is part of an animated short that was featured in Shortnitemares, an online film festival hosted by Epic Games in the game Fortnite Party Royale. The animation was broadcast on Disney XD in 2017 and chosen as Vimeo’s Staff Pick in 2016. Currently Lyons lives in Chicago and spends her time performing, recording, and teaching.

Born in Brunei and raised in Taiwan and Okinawa, Anne Ku embraced music at a young age, traversing various instruments until she discovered the ukulele on Maui. After earning her music degree in composition and teaching diploma in piano (on sightreading) from Utrecht Conservatory in the Netherlands, she performed widely as a chamber musician in duos with classical guitar, French horn, and cello. She taught music (class piano, music theory, music history, world music, and instrumental ensemble) at the University of Hawaii Maui College before moving to Boston where she started a ukulele club. Having written her MA in Music thesis on ukulele song sheets and participative music making, Anne believes the ukulele is the fastest way to making music and staying connected. She hosts 3 Chord Thursday, a song session in Zoom she founded at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown, reaching more than 3,000 members on Facebook.

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.

Host or Publisher Simsbury Meadows Performing Arts Center