George Hinchcliffe's Ukelele Orchestra Queen's Hall Edinburgh 8th June 2024 Review
George Hinchliffe's Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain were at the Queen’s Hall Edinburgh tonight and this was a busy show; the orchestra’s fans were obviously not missing the chance to catch this very unique ensemble of musicians performing live.
If you are reading this review and encountering the name “Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain” for the first time, you could be forgiven for thinking that this show is little more than a musical curiosity, or at best a novelty act. You could not, however, be further from the truth as the Ukulele Orchestra will be celebrating 40 years of being together next year and in that time they have performed their music all over the world and entertained countless fans of their music by live concerts, studio recordings (the orchestra stay fiercely independent of record labels) and internet/social media performances.
It may come as a surprise to many people (it certainly did to me) that the ukulele is actually a family of different instruments that, when properly arranged, allow the orchestra to create music ranging from high soprano all the way down to bass, and the results are so often not what you expect a ukulele to sound like. Forget that George Formby image that you might have in your head; George Hinchliffe's Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is something very different in style and content (although an element of that Formby humour is still there).
The orchestra are musical magpies. There is no musical genre that they will not play with, have a little bit of fun with and surprise their audiences with. With their unique arrangements tonight of songs like “Highway To Hell” (AC/DC), “Life on Mars” (David Bowie), “God Gave Rock’n’Roll To You” (Argent or Kiss, take your pick), “My Baby Does Good Sculptures” (Rezillos), “Dick Barton Special Agent theme”, Spooky (Dusty Springfield), “Teenage Dirtbag” (Wheatus) and many more, there was something for everyone on this set list tonight. All of this music was performed with top class musicianship.
The very nature of the orchestra’s on-stage performance - it’s very relaxed, an awful lot of humour, and at times a little bit tongue in cheek approach - masked that there was also a lot of very serious skills at work arranging this music.
How do you even start to describe an orchestra that has one family of instruments on-stage yet still with the line-up of seven ukuleles managed tonight to give unique arrangements of songs that you think you know well, think you know how they should always sound? You don’t; the best that you can do is just say to people, go along to their next concert and be prepared to become a fan of their unique take on music too.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
If you are reading this review and encountering the name “Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain” for the first time, you could be forgiven for thinking that this show is little more than a musical curiosity, or at best a novelty act. You could not, however, be further from the truth as the Ukulele Orchestra will be celebrating 40 years of being together next year and in that time they have performed their music all over the world and entertained countless fans of their music by live concerts, studio recordings (the orchestra stay fiercely independent of record labels) and internet/social media performances.
It may come as a surprise to many people (it certainly did to me) that the ukulele is actually a family of different instruments that, when properly arranged, allow the orchestra to create music ranging from high soprano all the way down to bass, and the results are so often not what you expect a ukulele to sound like. Forget that George Formby image that you might have in your head; George Hinchliffe's Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is something very different in style and content (although an element of that Formby humour is still there).
The orchestra are musical magpies. There is no musical genre that they will not play with, have a little bit of fun with and surprise their audiences with. With their unique arrangements tonight of songs like “Highway To Hell” (AC/DC), “Life on Mars” (David Bowie), “God Gave Rock’n’Roll To You” (Argent or Kiss, take your pick), “My Baby Does Good Sculptures” (Rezillos), “Dick Barton Special Agent theme”, Spooky (Dusty Springfield), “Teenage Dirtbag” (Wheatus) and many more, there was something for everyone on this set list tonight. All of this music was performed with top class musicianship.
The very nature of the orchestra’s on-stage performance - it’s very relaxed, an awful lot of humour, and at times a little bit tongue in cheek approach - masked that there was also a lot of very serious skills at work arranging this music.
How do you even start to describe an orchestra that has one family of instruments on-stage yet still with the line-up of seven ukuleles managed tonight to give unique arrangements of songs that you think you know well, think you know how they should always sound? You don’t; the best that you can do is just say to people, go along to their next concert and be prepared to become a fan of their unique take on music too.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
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