By Glen Creason
You have so much fun at a Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain concert that you sort of forget the solid musicianship and meticulous planning that goes into these sound extravaganzas that delight and educate the full houses that seem to follow them everywhere. The Performing Arts Center was fortunate enough to have this wonderful ensemble for two dates which seems way too little for what they have to offer. You really would have to bring in a juke box to offer up the variety and inspiration the group offers with compositions from Jazz, R&B, Country, Folk, Music Hall, Pop, Disco, Punk, Blues, Funk and more that the eight person group play in such perfect harmony that it sounds like one celestial uke interpreting the joy in all music. The band has been together for thirty years and they sound about as tight as a pair of Southern California skinny jeans which no one in attendance was wearing for this show. What makes their concerts so much fun is that there is not one single, solitary shred of ennui on stage except the calculated kind and there are moments of pure harmonic ecstasy that you might expect at a rock concert or full orchestra playing a symphony.
At Cerritos they culled from their huge song repertoire a couple of dozen winners interspersed with that trademark British drollery that in this circumstance seemed wholly appropriate. There was what you might expect from ukuleles: the 1922 hit “Running Wild,” “Hot Tamales” once played by blues man Robert Johnson and a sizzling “Limehouse Blues” that really let the band to exercise their musical muscles. There were also tongue in cheek delights like David Bowie’s “Life on Mars,” Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” the BeeGees “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” Dolly Parton’s “Joshua” and a high-octane “Shaft” that while fun, got some heads a nodding in the hall. The glorious thing about the Ukulele Orchestra is that this team plays together so well the epiphanies sort of sneak up on you and you get so caught up in the music that five or ten or an hour and forty-five minutes vanish delightfully before your eyes and ears. When the group locks into something like Saint-Saens “Danse Macabre” or the silly exhilaration of “Song 2” or “Woo Hoo” as it is known you forget about ukuleles or the many very funny jokes and remember what makes music magical.
