Today is Tax Day, but it was also supposed to end the Early Bird period for Fest tickets. Unfortunately, I was not able to get my taxes done by this deadline, so I had to file for an extension. Inspired by this turn of events, we decided to give the Early Bird period an extension too. We will continue to sell the Early Bird full festival ticket until April 23rd. At that time we will announce the full performance lineup and schedule. Apologies to those who asked about the day passes and how much they will be as compared to the full festival Early Bird pass. Quite simply, there is no comparison! We think of the Fest as composed of 6 segments (1-Thursday night, 2-Friday afternoon, 3-Friday night concert, 4-Saturday afternoon, 5-Saturday night concert, 6-Sunday luau.) The at-the-door,  box office price for each segment is $45, so that totals $270 and the Early Bird pass is half this (when Paypal gets it right!) Next week, when we announce the full schedule, the online price will still be discounted from the box office price, but not as steeply as this current Early Bird ticket. If you intend to attend anything more than one day, it would probably make sense to get the Full Festival pass.

We have had some great developments including the glorious return of Music Guy Mike to the NY Uke Fest. As many of you know, Mike is an extremely knowledgeable ukulele vendor, who is determined to please his ukulele customers with high quality goods and ongoing support. MGM is now affiliated with Hawaiian Music Supply and promises to bring their best ukuleles to offer to us here in NYC.

We also plan to announce this as the year of young ones. As we do each year, we include a public service as part of our regime. So this year, we are aiming to put ukuleles in the hands of as many kids as we can. We have a couple of outlets for this initiative. Katie Down has been raising funds for her South African teaching program and we have spoken to others, who work regularly with young uke players. With your help and the help of a couple of uke makers,  we will do what we can to help. Any ideas or work time would be welcome. More about this later.

 Ken