Singing Ukulele Retreat

Singing Ukulele Retreat
featuring Jim Beloff and Kate O’Connor

Fabric of Life is excited to offer another musical program as part of its ongoing efforts to preserve and promote traditional skills which enrich our daily lives. After a hugely successful Singing Ukulele Retreat in 2023, we have brought in two talented musicians for our second iteration of this fun singing and ukulele workshop.

The workshop will feature two great musicians:

Jim Beloff (pronounced bee-loff) is the author of The Ukulele—A Visual History (Backbeat Books) and author, arranger, and publisher of the Jumpin’ Jim’s series of ukulele songbooks with over 1,000,000 copies in print. This series is available worldwide and includes The Daily Ukulele, one of the biggest and best-selling ukulele songbooks ever published. All Jumpin’ Jim’s songbooks are distributed by Hal Leonard LLC. In December 2021, Backbeat books published Jim’s memoir, UKEtopia—Adventures in the Ukulele World.

Jim produced Legends of Ukulele, a CD compilation for Rhino Records, and has made three how-to-play DVDs for Homespun. He is also an active songwriter and has released a number of CDs. His two-CD set, Dreams I Left in Pockets, features 33 songs he wrote or co-wrote with uke legends, Herb “Ohta-san” Ohta and Lyle Ritz. His most recent album, The Wind and Sun, was released in August 2020.

In 1999, Jim composed and premiered Uke Can’t Be Serious, a concerto for solo ukulele and symphony orchestra. Since then, the piece has been performed with both high school and professional orchestras, including the Michigan Philharmonic in 2016. He has also performed it many times with a string quartet. His second concerto for ukulele and orchestra, The Dove Tale, premiered in 2017 with the Wallingford (Connecticut) Symphony Orchestra.

Jim and his wife, Liz Maihock Beloff, own Flea Market Music, Inc., a company dedicated to the ukulele and they play their family’s Fluke, Flea and Firefly ukes. They have toured Japan, Australia and Canada and believe in their company’s motto, “Uke Can Change the World.”

Visit Jim online at fleamarketmusic.com and on Facebook.

Kate O’Connor is a longtime career musician and band leader who has entertained audiences throughout New England, Bermuda and Florida with her stellar vocals, keyboards, steel drum, and guitar playing, and her original R & B, Jazz, Pop, and World Beat compositions. Kate is a best vocalist award winner from newspaper polls in the Western Massachusetts region, and was a longtime studio session vocalist for #1 hit songwriter Tony Romeo (I Think I love You). She performs with A Beautiful Future Band, (Caribbean, Irish, and multicultural original music), Blue Rendezvous, (Retro Soul and Swing), and Catalytics Swing Band, and teaches music lessons at the Northampton Community Music Center, Smith College, and Downtown Sounds.

Registration Opens Soon!