Midsummer Ukulele

Following the February premiere of Richard Durrant’s Ukulele Quartet No.1 Tan y Bwlch, the piece has just been performed again – this time in North Wales, the land that inspired the work in the first place…

Composer, guitarist and ukulele pioneer Richard’ Durrant’s eternal enthusiasm for the uke has been boosted by successful appearances at the Ukulele Festival of Scotland and Meet the Ukulele Makers Festival (MUMF) at Plas Tan y Bwlch north Wales.

In 2018, Richard composed his six movement ukulele concerto, Six Grooves for Ukulele. This was the springboard to writing the first ever ukulele quartet which was inspired by the landscape of North Wales.

Ukulele Quartet No.1 Tan y Bwlch consists of three movements:
I Penmaenbach
II Cledrau
III Gogoniant

The piece can be performed by four ukes (all have to be tuned as re-entrant) or by solo ukulele plus three ukulele groups of any size.

The newly released audio recording is available on all digital platforms (i-tunes, Spotify etc).

There are also loads of tutorial films on the Richard Durrant Academy website to help with learning and performing the music.

And the score is also available to buy online.

CALLING ALL UKULELE PLAYERS

Here is a chance for all Ukulele players to join Richard and play along with him at two of his forthcoming Music for Midsummer shows:

20 June 7.45pm The Hawth, Crawley
21 June 7.30pm Brighton Open Air Theatre

Find out more

Each concert in the Music for Midsummer tour includes Richard’s guitar piece Book of Spells as well as Bach’s 3rd Cello Suite played on a brand new SuperTenor Ukulele by the world renowned luthier Pete Howlett. This beautiful uke is made from pencil cedar and is an art object in its own right.

And if you want to take part here are the chord tabs you will need. Richard is refusing to say what the piece is – you’ll find out when you come along and play it – but numbers indicate the number of strums on each chord: