Kamloops Summer Ukulele Festival 2026

Avery Hill has been teaching music since 2013, and is a staple instructor of the Portland (OR) ‘ukulele community, offering weekly classes, monthly jams, and occasional special workshops. She has been a featured instructor at Menucha Ukulele Band Camp, UkeWest, Cazadero Family Arts Camp NW, and Reno 'Ukulele Festival and taught at three additional special events in 2025. Avery has also begun teaching songwriting, both at 'ukulele festivals and at the Songwriter Soireé Retreat. She maintains YouTube channels for her 'Ukulele Studio and Song Studio with regular tutorials, exercises and other helpful resources. Whatever the classroom, Avery strives 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. Her albums of original music are Dreams & Ghosts: A Family Album (2015) and The One Who Remembers (2024). Visit Avery's website at  www.averyhill.studio

Originally from Honolulu and based in Los Angeles, Daniel Ho is an ʻukulele pioneer, Hawaiian slack key guitarist, pianist, composer, singer-songwriter, producer, and audio engineer. He is a six-time GRAMMY® Award winner, six-time Taiwanese Golden Melody Award winner, and recipient of multiple Hawaiian music honors, including the recent 2025 Nā Hōkū Hanohano Legacy Award for Kī Hōʻalu (for his contributions to the perpetuation of the Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar tradition).

Daniel made ‘ukulele history when his solo album of fingerstyle compositions Pōlani (Pure), was nominated for a GRAMMY® Award in 2010. His collaborations transcend genres, and his recordings include traditional and contemporary Hawaiian music with GRAMMY Award winners Tia Carrere and George Kahumoku, Jr.; world music with Taiwanese aboriginals and Mongolian nomads; duets with Pepe Romero the maestro of classical guitar; contemporary jazz and rock with Tak Matsumoto of the Japanese rock duo, B’z; Afrobeats with Ugandan superstar Eddy Kenzo; and nature-inspired instrumentals with Gaby Quintero of Rodrigo y Gabriela. His music has also been featured in film and television (The Descendants, Soul Surfer, Carlos, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Waterman, Hawaiʻi Five-O, NCIS: Hawaiʻi, NHK Japan).

As an artist and clinician, Daniel performs concerts and teaches workshops in North America and abroad. He has toured as a cultural ambassador for the U.S. Department of State to Asia, Australia, Greenland, Mexico, and Brazil. He has been a guest lecturer at Stanford University, and was the 2023 Regents’ Lecturer at UCLA. He is the co-designer of the Romero Creations Tiny Tenor ‘ukulele, and Ohana Bongolele and Shakerlele percussion instruments. Daniel has been a longtime YAMAHA Guitar artist and Universal Audio endorsee.

His newest endeavor to spread the love of making music: the ʻEkolu ʻukulele. Ask him about it and he’ll light up at the opportunity to share!

Eduardo is a dedicated Ukulele teacher, and has been a feature instructor/performer internationally, in festivals around Canada, the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Brasil, and was featured on the International spotlight of the Ukulele Festival Hawai’i in 2021, among other online and offline events since making his festival debut in 2017.

He was the founder/director of the Academia de Ukuleles de la Ribera (Lakeside Ukulele Academy), a self-financed music school that provides instruments and free music lessons to all children in his community and that continues active to this day.

Being both classically and traditionally trained, Eduardo was active in a wide diversity of music projects in Mexico, teaching, performing and writing music. He collaborated on the book ‘Tsenten Ajab’, a book of studies and arrangements of both traditional and modern music for the Jarana Huasteca, a traditional folk instrument from Mexico’s Huasteco region, and that was published in 2018. He also played several different traditional folk string instruments with ‘Amate’, a traditional mariachi based in Guadalajara. Parallel to that, he played the cello on the ‘Victor Manuel Medeles’ chamber orchestra, of which he was also the arranger/composer of almost all of their repertoire, and the main teacher of the Centro Regional de Estudios Musicales (CREM), the classical music academy that was behind that orchestra. Nowadays, Eduardo is fully committed to the Ukulele, and continues to teach music through this beloved instrument anywhere he goes.

Tina started guitar lessons as a teenager and soon fell in love with classical guitar. She studied classical guitar at Capilano University and continued with a variety of guitar teachers afterwards. Although Tina’s first experience with a ukulele was in Grade 4, she hadn’t played one for a long time. As an adult she became inspired to pick it up again, and the rest is history!

Tina is known for her relaxed, warm and friendly approach to teaching music. She has a kind and gentle manner that helps to empower students, from beginner to advanced. She is a graduate of the James Hill Ukulele Initiative teacher training program and considers herself a community music advocate. Tina regularly offers an online session for fingerstyle enthusiasts, called Sunday Ukulele. What do her students say about it? “I love Tina's Sunday ukulele! I learn so much every week-- her gentle, kind guidance and quirky sense of humor along with her masterful teaching and playing make this hour on Sunday mornings one of the highlights of my week!”

Tina has been a teacher at Kamloops Interior Summer School of Music for several years and worked with the Kamloops Music Collective (the non-profit organization that operates KISSM) to design and facilitate the very successful online lesson series Family Ukulele. Tina has facilitated music lessons for elementary school students for the past few years and is honored to be involved in the children’s musical development. She has also presented workshops for SD 73 teachers (Professional Development Day), offering on-site workshops for teachers in rural areas.

Tina has been a recurring workshop instructor at the Kamloops Ukulele Festival, UkeWest, Rossland Acoustic Music Camp, Georgia Strait Guitar Camp, Jam Camp (family musical event held at a variety of campsites in BC), Bellingham Ukulele Group (BUG) workshops, and Reno Ukefest. She enjoyed being a part of the TNRD Library Systems Musician-in-Residence series and helped to introduce their ukulele lending program. Tina is a part of the Kamloops Early Language and Literacy Initiative as a Mother Goose facilitator, sharing songs and rhymes with young children and their families, which includes facilitating inter-generational sessions.

You can find out more about Tina here:

https://tinasmusic.ca/

https://www.instagram.com/tinas.music/

https://www.youtube.com/@tinasmusic/playlists

Casey MacGill performs music that swings. Nat "King" Cole Trio meets the Mills Brothers. Fats Waller meets Fats Domino. Slim Galliard meets Fred Astaire. It is American music of many decades and no decade in particular, all happening at the same time, woven into a seamless, beautiful whole.

At the core of his sound are his band's sometimes sweet, sometimes rough-hewn three-part harmony vocals and a piano-ukulele-bass-and-drums rhythm section that swings in a variety of textures. He steers the band from his piano bench, alternately cruising along and sweating feverishly, switching intuitively between the ukulele and the piano and the cornet, singing and scatting, sometimes all within the same song.

He has been singing and arranging vocal harmonies for over 40 years, in a career that stretches from Los Angeles (Mood Indigo, feature films "Frances" and "Swing Shift") to Spokane, WA (The Spirits of Rhythm and the neo-swing classic CD "Jump") to Broadway (The musical "Swing") and finally to Seattle (most recently with the Blue 4 Trio).

Award-winning artist and Maui native Neal Chin has been both an ‘ukulele educator and performer over the course of his musical career of 20 years. His clear and direct enthusiasm for music has come to life in countless workshops, concerts, and private instruction. He's been nominated for the Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award for ‘Ukulele Album of the Year two years consecutively, for ‘Ukulele Paintings and The Spotless Mind, in 2017 and 2018. Neal has toured across the U.S. and currently lives, teaches, and performs in Seattle, WA.

Lenny San Jose aka Ukulenny is an ukulele performer and educator based in Oakland, CA. After earning his music degree from UC Berkeley, he practiced his ukulele on public transportation, and eventually recorded tutorials and covers on YouTube. His channel "Ukulenny" has received over 10 million views and continues to reach over 75,000 subscribers around the world. A sponsored Kala Artist, he's played and taught at many ukulele festivals, including the SF Summer Ukesplosion, Los Angeles International 'Ukulele Festival, Reno Ukulele Festival, Mighty Uke Day, Midwest Ukulele and Harmonica Camp, Grand Northern Ukulele Festival (UK), and more. Lenny's performances often feature his one man band, bringing the sounds of ukulele, bass, beatbox, saxophone, and vocals to an eclectic mix of reggae, R&B, and classic rock. Currently Ukulenny teaches monthly ukulele and U-Bass workshops on Patreon, and preaches the ukulele gospel wherever he goes. Most recently, he released the video series and E-book, "Moving on Up," now available at the Ukulele Magazine online store.

Debbie Korn lives in Fruitvale, BC where she spent 35 years teaching grades 1-6 in the public school system. During her final 6 years of teaching, she taught harmonica to her class, in tandem with a harmonica-obsessed senior citizen from the community. Together, they formed an after school club dubbed ‘The Harmaniaks’ who performed regularly at school events, community celebrations, and in seniors’ homes. Debbie took up the ukulele in order to accompany The Harmaniaks.

When not playing ukulele or harmonica, Debbie can be found living the Kootenay dream: skiing at Red Mountain, hiking in the Selkirks, producing fine backyard vegetables, or paddling in many of the beautiful local waterways with her intrepid, stern paddler husband, Peter.