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Cairns Ukulele Festival Day 9
I am currently relaxing on a huge and spacious Airbus A380-800 from Sydney to Los Angeles, reflecting on my 2nd Cairns, Australia Ukulele Festival. Surprisingly, there are no crying babies in the surrounding area... I even have the surrounding seats around me free... lucky! It seems the flight is just a little over 50% full. So here I sit, with nothing but my iPad and keyboard to distract me.
A flood of emotions and ideas have been hitting me since the end of the ukefest. Part of my current high is meeting and playing along with the other musicians (there were so MANY amazing musicians!!!), part of it is sharing new songs and techniques but the biggest thing that I feel I'm taking away from this trip is a sense of growth.
Growth. There has definitely been growth within myself as a musician over the past year (putting out my first album, increase in teaching and gigging, even putting out a successful master class workshop on ukuleleunderground), but it has been so much more than that. I'm starting to learn how everything works, and finding how to balance everything needed to achieve my goals. I keep forgetting how important sleep is, even on this trip I struggled to get enough sleep in. There is an incredible amount of work that no one tells you about when wanting to become a full time musician (I'll probably write up my thoughts on this in another post in the future) and I feel incredibly blessed to have so much support from friends, family and students. It is with their faith that will keep me pushing forward.
Growth. This festival has grown in many ways. It was obvious seeing the 1500+ people at Fogerty Park on Saturday, the amount of people showing up at the numerous events throughout the week, the amount of awareness and advertising that went into the festival this year but it was the growth of the attendees that stood out to me. From Luke Walker's own children and St Andrews student group to the many attendees that I met last year to past performers such as Thom Jackson, everyone has improved so much! Not in just technique but in performing! All of a sudden my eyes opened. I saw the much bigger picture. It took this return trip to Cairns to understand what I have to offer and how I fit into the grand scheme of things as an educator and performer. Although it has been a continually changing canvas, my tools will only get more refined.
Even now I have a ton more to talk about but will save that for another day. I'll close my eyes and try to get some sleep while remembering what 1500 ukuleles sound like. Sweet dreams Cairns.
*Edit: I will be editing and uploading all of my photos from the trip within the next few days, stay tuned :)
Cairns Ukulele Festival Day 7 + 8
What a spectacular day of music... Sunday at the Tanks Arts Center was beautifully done. I have so many emotions going through me right now... I was blown away by the support and love from both attendees and artists from this trip. As much as I wish I had full use of my voice for my performances it also allowed from some unique set ups as both other artists and the crowd helped me through my songs and I will never forget it. We had such a great crew this year and the positive energy was recycled back and forth all week... So much love and aloha. As the festival gets bigger, so does the crew needed to keep running smoothly. Like I mentioned before, this festival will be one that other ukefests will start to compare to. The events, workshops, performances... Just amazing...and it will only get better.
I will be writing a lot more about the trip but for now I'll leave with some photos :)
Cairns ukulele festival day 6
Wow. What a day. First off, I finally got a chance to sleep in a little, and it felt wonderful. I did feel my throat tightening up a little what can one expect with so many activities in one week. I got to the Hilton (where numerous events were taking place) to teach my workshop and was amazed by how prepared my students were. Everyone had so much energy and we got through a ton of material. Though with all workshops without a PA, I could feel my voice starting to strain. Trying to talk over a bunch of uke players can be a tricky thing and I got caught up with everything and wasn't watching how loud I was talking. Not only that, but paired with going 30 min long, I knew after that I was in trouble...
Putting that aside for now, we all headed over to Fogerty Park where the world record attempt for largest ukulele ensemble was taking place... Last year we about 40 people short of the record and we were determined to break it this year. Unfortunately the record almost doubled from last year... we now needed over 1600 uke players to break the record. The official number was 1395. An amazing number and we were extremely proud to get so close to the record. It was a great time at the park... even though it started to rain everyone stayed up beat. Matt Dahlberg had a great set after the attempt and it was great to see how much he has grown over the past few years as a musician. I joined matt for a few songs then it was off to the Jack where I would be doing a set with local and international performers... I will go into more detail later as I'm currently getting ready for the last day of the festival at the Tanks Arts Center but it was just awesome. The level of musicianship, the excitement of the crowd.. I ended up losing my voice mid set but pushed through... it ended up being a very emotional set for me. It was definitely one of my favorite times ever to be playing on stage. Ryo Montgomery, John (I can't spell or pronounce his last name, will look it up later!) and Paul Hemmings... just amazing. I also brought up Monitoba Hal, Derick Sebastion, Matt D, Tom Jackson, and furai_pad. Photos for now, more details soon.
