The Cairns Ukulele Festival is pleased to announce the return of AJ Leonard’s Tropical Lounge a fantastic 4-piece band from Melbourne. The band includes A.J.’s longtime performing partner Jenny Rowlands (the hardest working cellist in show business) and Wendy Rowlands on vocals, accordion, percussion and keyboards as well as David Billings on vocals, ukulele and guitar. The band has become a firm favourite with the festival crowd due to their beautiful arrangements, entertaining performances and ever-expanding repertoire of original and traditional music.
Whilst in Cairns, AJ will be releasing his seventh album, Australian Songbook, produced and arranged with Tropical Lounge partner David.
AJ will also conduct two workshops at the festival. One is themed around his new album, the Australian Songbook. In this workshop AJ covers various strums as well as interesting chord sequences and inversions. The other workshop is based on the American Songbook, with a strong focus on the music of Henry Mancini, whose familiar classics include Peter Gunn, Baby Elephant Walk, Moon River and The Pink Panther. AJ will share some of the unique strumming and picking techniques he has become renowned for.
Also scheduled is a workshop by Hawaiian virtuoso Derick Sebastian that will teach participants how to solo and fingerpick in various keys, and a workshop by fulare_pad. Fulare_pad will conduct their absolute beginners workshop in Japanese.
Cairns Ukulele Festival 