A humbly compelling and beloved instrument gains expressive, virtuoso freedom with the George Hinchliffe's Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. At their hands, the ever-present relevance of popular music meets the lofty sounds of "highbrow" fare in a delicious acoustic mash-up like nothing else you've heard. "Iconoclastic. Unabashed genre crashing antics" (The Times of London).
George Hinchliffe's Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is a group of all-singing, all-strumming Ukulele players, using instruments bought with loose change, which believes that all genres of music are available for reinterpretation, as long as they are played on the Ukulele.
A concert by the Ukulele Orchestra is a funny, virtuosic, twanging, awesome, foot-stomping obituary of rock-n-roll and melodious light entertainment featuring only the "bonsai guitar" and a menagerie of voices in a collision of post-punk performance and toe-tapping oldies. There are no drums, pianos, backing tracks or banjos, no pitch shifters or electronic trickery. Only an astonishing revelation of the rich palette of orchestration afforded by ukuleles and singing (and a bit of whistling). Audiences have a good time with the Ukulele Orchestra. Going from Tchaikovsky to Nirvana via Otis Redding and Spaghetti Western soundtracks, the Orchestra takes us on "a world tour with only hand luggage" and gives the listener "One Plucking Thing After Another".