News – guitar + music blog

A gift of Vermont music: Art’s picks

Music reviewer and Vermont Arts Correspondent Art Edelstein recently wrote an end of year article highlighting music by Vermont musicians in 2022. The article is titled, “A gift of Vermont music: Art’s picks“.

The article summarizes nine Vermont recordings. My CD album, Uplifting Guitar Hymns, was mentioned by Art in paragraph 5. The print version included my CD cover.

The article appeared in the Vermont Arts section of Rutland Herald and Times Argus on December 10. It later appeared in the Rutland Reader, December 16-22, page 8 (e-edition).

Thanks again for Art Edelstein’s review of my CD album back in January 2022.

Happy Holidays!

New Recording – Uplifting Guitar Hymns

I will be releasing a CD album titled, “Uplifting Guitar Hymns” in early 2022. There will be a CD Release Concert and Fundraiser for Grace Church on January 30, 2022. The concert will benefit the Mission and Service programs at Grace Church, via a Free Will Offering and sharing of proceeds from CD sales after the concert.

You can find more details about the music on this CD album, and the January 30 concert on the album website, Uplifting Guitar Hymns.

Ukulele Virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro in concert April 27 (Troy, NY)

I recently saw a very cool music documentary on PBS (WMHT – Albany, NY) about ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro from Hawaii. He not only plays traditional Hawaiian music, but he plays many different styles of music on the uke, from classical to rock, etc.

The film “Life On Four Strings” was shown on WMHT on March 11th, 2013 (PBS debut). The “national” debut on other PBS stations is on May 10th, 2013 (don’t miss it).

As a supporter of WMHT I was inspired to donate for this particular “pledge drive”, since it provided a CD and two tickets to see Jake Shimabukuro live in concert at the “Troy Savings Bank” Music Hall in Troy, NY on April 27, 2013 @ 8 PM. I very much look forward to this show.

Here is a video of interview with Jake Shimabukuro, by Jeffery Brown of the PBS NewsHour.

Jake also provides chord charts for the Ukulele on his website! When I looked these over, the fingerings are similar to guitar chords on bottom 4 strings. The main difference is the chord names. For example, the C Major chord on the ukulele has similar fingering to the 4-string version of G Major chord on guitar. The same goes for most of the other chords (hmm … I’ve seen those chord fingerings somewhere before). That entices me to look into learning more about the ukulele!