Jake Shimabukuro showcases his high energy live performance at The Flying Monkey in Plymouth on Saturday, June 8 at 7:30 PM.    Shimabukuro is known as the “Jimi Hendrix of the Ukulele.” Tickets for this concert start at $39.

Don’t underestimate the ukulele. It may be small, but musician Jake Shimabukuro proves that you don’t need more than four strings to make magic happen.

Shimabukuro was born 1976 in Hawaii. He was well known there and in Japan during his early solo career in the early 2000s. He became famous internationally in 2006, when a video of him playing a virtuosic rendition of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was posted on YouTube without his knowledge and became one of the first viral videos on that site.

One minute his performance can sound like a lush lullaby, like the waves hitting the shores in his native Hawaii, while the next he can rock out with all the rascally tonality of an electric guitar. He can dive bomb it into a groove, shake it with some bluegrass spirit and still have it pay homage to its roots with classical Hawaiian signature chords.

“When I was in high school, I would pull electric guitar riffs and quote classical pieces and things like that. And I remember people just kind of looking at me and saying, “Wow, I didn’t think you could do that with the ukulele.” That’s kind of when the light bulb went off. I started dabbling in different styles of music, playing some rock tunes, and jazz tunes, classical pieces… just hinting at different things in the beginning before really tackling them with a serious arrangement.
My freshman year in high school is when I really started to get experimental. And that’s when I kind of took a little different direction and strayed away a little bit from the traditional Hawaiian music. I mean, that will always be my first love, but I really wanted to see what else was possible out there. I wanted to extend the boundaries of what ukulele music was.”- says Shimabukuro
Don’t miss an evening with the young virtuoso who has been compared to the likes of Yo Yo Ma, Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix.

Tickets for Jake Shimabukuro range from $39-$49.  For more information on upcoming shows or to purchase tickets call the box office at 603-536-2551 or go online at www.flyingmonkeyNH.com.