Duke of Uke end of term concert, Bedroom Bar, Rivington St, London EC1

The Duke of Uke is the place to buy a ukelele in London, or learn how to play it. Recently they had an end-of-term evening which enabled all the classes to have a public performance of the pieces they had been learning. It was a joyous occasion, with the classes giving their all, and the assembled friends and relatives encouraging them vociferously. It is surprising how good a class of people who have only had 10 lessons can sound, even if individually many of them wouldn't be able to perform a convincing solo. The lion's share of the performing time was taken by the most advanced class.

All the pieces involved a combination of ukelele and singing, and it was interesting to see the different approaches. One of the classes of complete beginners (doing a a mash-up of 2 songs called Crazy, one by Gnarls Barkley and one by the better-known Patsy Cline) was accompanied by the teacher and a classmate, while another class concentrated on their playing and had a group of singers accompanying them, a group of teachers, friends and players from other classes. Many of the other pieces, by the more advanced classes, took the latter approach, and while it made for a good performance, especially with one particularly fine solo singer, they were rather upstaging the ukelele players sometimes.

The venue was the Bedroom Bar in Rivington St in Shoreditch. It had a look I associate with Shoreditch, a stripped-down look with lots of old and reused materials - very good. No decent beer on hand-pumps unfortunately, but at least they had Belgian beer in bottles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxq-sFCBMsg