Ukulele 1

Martin Wheatley has enjoyed a varied career playing and teaching all sorts of fretted instruments: guitar, banjos of all sorts, mandolin and ukulele. His interest in the ukulele started long before the current wave of popularity through a love of vintage Hawaiian music. You can watch him performing on the ukulele on Youtube but he is as interested in the value and joy of the instrument for complete novices as he is in pushing technical boundaries. His performing career has been spent playing old-style jazz (pre-WW2) with occasional forays into the worlds of rock (Bryan Ferry) and classical music (Royal Liverpool Philharmonic). He has a B.A. from Colchester, an M.A. from University College London and a houseful of ukuleles.

Jake is a multi-instrumentalist whose work for several years has had a strong leaning towards the community and social aspects of music. His songwriting and performing builds bridges between ages and demographics, and his styles of presentation and performance attempt the same. Jake runs Froggy's Famous Fan Club (for pre-schoolers), The Cream of Tartar Show (a cabaret performance/workshop) and is his own One Man Band. He plays ukulele, harmonica, accordion, banjo, guitar, piano and percussion, sings, and writes many, many songs. innovation and re-invention have been the inspiration since the covid curse, and Jake has been exploring his unique musical take with live online shows and a collection of original songs. At City Lit Jake teaches ukulele and harmonica.