Tag Archives: #ukesoft

La laine des moutons

Je suis tellement fière de partager cette dernière vidéo de ‘Ukulele Orchestra of Toronto que je viens de réaliser. L’ensemble interprète mon arrangement de cette chanson folklorique française pour ukulélés et voix, sous la direction de Eve Goldberg. Quel plaisir de recevoir son appel pour créer un projet dans ma langue maternelle. N’hésitez pas de me contacter si ça vous intéresse de l’essayer avec vos groupes. Il serait mon plaisir de partager la partition.

Chantons, chantons! la laine des moutons.

I’m so proud to share this latest video I’ve produced for the Ukes of T! The orchestra is presenting my arrangement of this traditional French song for ukuleles and voice under the direction of Eve Goldberg. It was really nice to be asked by Eve to create something in my mother tongue for the group and if this is an arrangement you’d like to try with your groups, please drop me a line and I will be happy to share it.

A Year of Pandemic Life

1 Reply

The entire month of March has been a time for marking many anniversaries, some pandemic related, some not. A couple of weeks ago the Ukulele Orchestra of Toronto premiered two more virtual performance videos I helped create as well as an opener by our CUTE ensemble, which was a video we had put together in February. I created a playlist below, of the collection:

YouTube Playlist of my Pandemic Virtual Videos

It’s all been a really great learning opportunity for me to have a hand in making these and I’m really happy that I was able to help my ukulele community stay connected and keep making music. Being one of the lucky who has so far been spared of the disease in my family and close circles, I am thankful and try to remember that many others have not been as fortunate. It’s hard not to feel like this will never end but I know that it will, hopefully in the next few months as more and more of us are receiving vaccines. Although, as we head into what is looking like a 3rd wave of cases here in Toronto, I don’t really see us getting together again soon to play and sing in person here. I was secretly hoping for maybe an outdoor event later this spring but I’m not sure that’s going to happen now. And now that I’ll be moving into a new living situation soon, I’m probably going to take a little break from video production for a few months.

J’ai deux amours

Here’s a little snippet of music I’ve been working on today. As I move through the Ukulele Jazz course over at Uketropolis, I’ve tried using some of the jazzy chords I’ve picked up in the course to accompany my Memère here. My Dad sent me a little clip of her singing this from her bed just after the new year and I couldn’t resist doing a little duet with her again. Maybe we’ll be able to get together for her 101st birthday this year. I’m happy to report that she is fully vaccinated against COVID-19! In memory of her daughter, who passed one year ago today, and our trip to Paris together in 1988, here it is. Excusez-la!

Two more Virtual Performances from the Ukes of T

1 Reply

The Ukulele Orchestra of Toronto premiered TWO virtual performance videos this afternoon. The group worked very hard to learn their parts, record them and let us put them together virtually.

In both of these, our director, Eve Goldberg, mixed the audio submissions from each member and I put the final music tracks to a couple of video montages.

The first is the hymn from Finlandia by Jean Sibelius, we had members send in photos of their favourite places in the world and we put them to the music along with the beautiful lyrics of this melody.

In the second video, we just recorded ourselves during one of our Tuesday night Zoom rehearsals and sent Eve our recorded audio parts separately. Voila! An MTV style snapshot of this incredible time we are living through, and it’s set to Bird of Paradise, a beautiful song by Tony Bird with such a great message about what’s important in this life.

As we get closer to the anniversary of our last rehearsal together, I’m also feeling really thankful that the members of the orchestra are persevering through the pandemic and continuing to create with together, these moments of musical joy, despite the chaos of the time.