Avery Hill
Avery Hill is a performing artist, songwriter, storyteller, and music teacher. Her singular style of songwriting integrates intricate melodies with insightful, storytelling lyrics. Avery’s voice is at once both wise and curious, direct and searching, telling and investigating. Her latest album is Dreams & Ghosts: A Family Album (2015), featuring the award-winning single Hello & Goodbye. Since 2013, she has been teaching ukulele classes and workshops, leading jams, and instructing at camps and retreats. Whatever the classroom, Avery’s teaching philosophy is encompassed in three goals: to educate everyone’s inner musician, to elevate their self-knowledge and confidence, and to enchant them with insight, presence, and a handful of good jokes.
Matt Weiner
Big tone and solid rhythm have made Matt Weiner one of the busiest bass players in the Northwest. Inspired by the “prebop” bass players and their music, he’s slapping out a syncopated jazz feel on one tune, on another bowing a folksy melody.
Frequently performing upward of 200 shows per year, Matt can be spotted around Seattle and other places plucking, bowing and slapping his gut-strung bass with Jacob Zimmerman, Ray Skjelbred, Del Rey, Barton Carroll, Bric-a-Brac Trio, Squirrel Butter, Wayne Horvitz, Eli Rosenblatt, Casey MacGill and many others. He has also recorded and performed with The Todalo Shakers, The Hot Club of Cowtown, The Asylum Street Spankers, Butch Thompson, Becky Kilgore, Danny Barnes, Matt Munisteri, Jon-Erik Kellso, Rani Arbo and James Hill.
He was a featured musician in the 2019 production of the Christmas Revels in Cambridge, MA. Less recently, he played the role of bass player Joe B. Mauldin in the 5th Avenue Theatre production of Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story. At The Ukeshack #1, an album of bass and ukulele duets with Del Rey, was released in 2007.
2+ decades of experience has made Matt a highly sought-after teacher. Matt has taught at the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, the Yukon Woodshed Acoustic Music Workshop, The Portland Ukulele Festival, The Menucha Ukulele Bandcamp, and 4 different Centrum music camps: the Ukulele Festival, the Country Blues Festival, Voiceworks and the Red Hot Strings Workshop. He teaches bass, electric bass, tenor guitar and beginning guitar private lessons and workshops at Dusty Strings in Seattle, and at his little home in White Center.
Nova Devonie
Nova Karina Devonie is a busy Seattle musician who delights audiences with her sensitive accordion playing, sonorous singing style, and sideways fashion sense. Interested in the amazing connection and communication that music can provide, she loves adding accordion to many styles of music. Nova divides her time between performing in bands, teaching private music lessons, and composing music with David Miles Keenan for the duo Miles and Karina.
Nova has been playing piano accordion since the age of eleven and teaching the instrument since the late 1980’s. Focusing on tunes and technique with a bit of theory thrown in, she aims for fun and ease while moving at a comfortable pace for the student. She utilizes both reading written music and playing by ear, and especially enjoys helping beginners develop good habits and intermediate players broaden their skills. Nova draws from her years of experience listening to and playing with top-notch musicians in a variety of styles.
Nova toured as a member of the cowgirl supergroup Ranch Romance in the early 1990’s and now performs regularly in several Seattle bands, including Miles & Karina, The Buckaroosters, and Rare Birds. Nova has taught at the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, California Coast Music Camp, and the Port Townsend Ukulele Festival.
Jeff Peterson
Born on the Island of Maui, two-time Grammy Award nominee and fourteen-time Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award winner Jeff Peterson grew up on the slopes of Haleakalā where he was introduced to the rich heritage of Hawaiian music by his father, a paniolo, or Hawaiian cowboy, on the Haleakalā Ranch. He went on to study guitar and music composition at the University of Southern California and the University of Hawaiʻi in Mānoa. He has studied with a variety of teachers including Keola Beamer, Ozzie Kotani, Lisa Smith, Benjamin Verdery, Larry Koonse, Jamie Findlay, Richard Smith, Benny Chong, and Joe Diorio.
As a performer, Jeff has had the honor to work with a wide range of artists and groups including Eric Clapton, Keola Beamer, James Galway, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Aaron Neville, Boz Scaggs, Amy Hanaialiʻi, Ledward Kaapana, Hindustani slide guitar master Debashish Bhattacharya, the Honolulu Symphony, Hawaii Opera Theatre, The Nashville Symphony Orchestra, jazz bassist Rufus Reid, shakuhachi master Riley Lee, Taiko master Kenny Endo, and with many other artists in the fields of Hawaiian, classical, and jazz music.
Eve Goldberg
Eve Goldberg is a compelling songwriter and interpreter whose watercolour voice and solid instrumental style has made her a favourite with audiences across North America. Her intimate performances, both solo and with the duo Gathering Sparks, draw on folk, blues, country, bluegrass, and jazz influences. She leads the Parkdale Ukulele Group and the Ukulele Orchestra of Toronto, and teaches online classes from her studio in Toronto. She has performed and taught at the James Hill Ukulele Institute (BC and ON), Port Townsend Ukulele Festival (WA), Midwest Ukulele and Harmonica Camp (MI), Strathmore UkeFest (MD), Ashokan Ukefest (NY), Haliburton School of Art and Design (ON), and more — and is in demand as a teacher and performer at ukulele events far and wide.
Guido Heistek
Guido Heistek holds a B.F.A. in Music from Concordia University in Montreal and is a CANSTAT certified teacher of the Alexander Technique. He makes his home in Vancouver, BC. Guido has performed and taught in the US, Japan, and Canada, and has worked as both an arranger and consultant for stage and film. Guido teaches private and small group lessons at his downtown studio, runs Ukulele in the Dark, a uke site with a large international following, and is half of the Vancouver duo, Heistek and Plato. He is a multi-instrumentalist trained in jazz guitar, but ukulele holds a very special place in his heart. He is particularly fond of sharing the wonders of chord melody and ensemble playing on the ukulele and exploring how the principles of the Alexander Technique can be applied to music learning.
Nicole & Aaron Keim
Aaron and Nicole Keim live an artistic life in Hood River, OR: making music, building musical instruments, teaching music, writing books, crafting folk art, and raising their 11-year-old son Henry. Their connection to folk tradition is undeniable, even as they find new ways to sing old songs and incorporate music and art into their teaching and performing. Influenced by Depression era string band music and the folk revival, they use ukulele, banjo and accordion to accompany their harmony singing, old time tunes and audience sing-alongs.
The Keims have been the artistic directors for Menucha Ukulele Band Camp since 2022 and are the artistic directors for the Port Townsend Ukulele Festival in Port Townsend, WA.
Aaron and Nicole have multiple degrees in Music Education and have taught in public schools and at ukulele festivals around the world. They also enjoy teaching adult music classes and private lessons. The duo has self-published several ukulele and banjo instructional books, using Nicole’s handwritten notation and Aaron’s YouTube videos to help folks learn at home. Aaron is a luthier who builds ukuleles and banjos as Beansprout Musical Instruments, while Nicole helps run their multiple businesses.
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