Portland Uke Festival for everyone


What a fantastic week! Perfect weather, perfect hostess … and ukes for days! This is not your typical festival. It is a music camp for ukulele held on the campus of Reed College and sponsored by the 300 member Portland Ukulele Association (PUA). It really gave us a chance to know the instructors and learn.

We got to visit with old friends Byron Yasui, James Hill, Aaron Keim, Joel Eckhaus, Mike DaSilva as well as our Texas friend turned Hawaiian wahine Cindee Burkitt. The wild Portland Rose, Ms. Jeannie Ceciliani was our hostess and we became fast buds sporting our wonderful King ukuleles everywhere we went. Kerry Char is a name you will be hearing more about as he is making quite a name for himself with his spectacular custom ukuleles.

We visted his shop as well as coming home with a couple of his incredible instruments. By the way, we are very pleased to be representing him at UkeLady Music! I’ll add more to this blog as well as pictures from the festival soon.