We are excited to welcome back one of last year’s surprise hit shows – The Wellington Ukulele Orchestra. The Wellies return to the Palladium this Saturday – March 19 – and my buddy at the Mahaffey Theater, Bill DeYoung, has passed along his story about the upcoming show. Check it out:
By Bill DeYoung
A year ago, the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra was wrapping up its very first tour of America. For most of the musicians, the tour represented their first time away from New Zealand.
“From the time that our band first started performing in Wellington, we’ve always loved the idea of taking it around the world,” notes Age Pryor, one of the ensemble’s founders. “And we always suspected that the act would go well in America. When we finally came over last year, there was a real curiosity as to whether it would work as well as we’d thought.”
The “Wellies” play ukuleles of various sizes and colors, singing duets, trios and ensemble songs with sparkling choral harmonies. They wear quirky costumes and they dance. Their show, which played The Palladium last year, is as humorous as it is musical.
As it turned out, Pryor explains, “American audiences ‘get’ our show almost more than New Zealand audiences do! They took it with open arms. It was a really good feeling, and I guess vindicating as well. It really felt like we had guessed right, that it would work here.”
They’re coming back for another Palladium-go-round Saturday, March 19.
One of the few band members who’d already seen America (albeit as a tourist), Pryor enjoyed watching Middle America, the farmlands and the small towns, through the windows as the Wellies’ van rolled through. There was, he reports, a curious and unexpected sort of culture shock.
“We’ve grown up with a bit of New Zealand TV, quite a lot of English TV, and a lot of American TV,” Pryor says. “There’s a lot of American culture in New Zealand. And it’s a really strange experience to come over here and see things that you weren’t even looking for, things that suddenly trigger something in your memory.
“For example, the big yellow school buses remind everybody of Sesame Street. We don’t have school buses like that. There are really random things that you come across, almost on a daily basis, that trigger memories from your childhood. That’s quite an amazing experience.”
Still, “I think often the best and most memorable moments are meeting people after the show – or just having an interaction with people out in the street.”
The Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra’s set list includes everything from popular ballads to blues and rock ‘n’ roll, along with a liberal amount of enchanting music from the South Seas – where the ukulele, after all, originated.
“The ukulele immediately opens that door into Hawaiian music, and as soon as you’re doing Hawaiian music you’re immediately seeing the connection between that and traditional Maori music from New Zealand,” Pryor says. “Over time, while the band was developing, we started coming into contact with music from other Pacific islands like Fiji, Tahiti and Tonga.
“When you grow up in New Zealand, you learn songs in the indigenous language at primary school. And you hear it around you a lot, right through all ages and all walks of life you’re around it. And the connection between Maori language and the Hawaiian language is very apparent, just like all the Pacific languages are obviously related.”
(Yes, a few of their songs are performed – luxuriously and harmoniously – in other languages. It’s part of what makes the group so unique.)
The gang is playing music every night, happy as Kiwi clams, savoring every second they get to be on this side of the world doing what they love and what they’re good at. “We want to be on tour,” says Prior. “We want to keep doing this, because it’s such an awesome experience. There’s such a positive vibe in the group; there’s so much positivity onstage.
“And we get so much back from the audience – there’s a great thing that’s clearly special, and that’s what keeps us going.”
Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra
At 8 p.m. Saturday, March 19
Palladium Theater, 253 Fifth Avenue N., St. Petersburg
For tickets and more info click here!
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