Solo Ukulele Jazz: "Autumn Leaves"
About Stu
Stu Fuchs is a heart centered, award winning musician and teaching artist. His passion is helping others learn to play music with greater ease, freedom and joy. Over a 25 year career, Stu has played music across the globe: Django Reinhardt’s gypsy jazz with symphony orchestras, presenting workshops at ukulele festivals on three continents, facilitating drumming & music improvisation at yoga retreat centers for everyone from children to college music students, prison inmates to Fortune 500 CEOs.
In addition to being a ukulele minstrel, Stu has toured to three continents performing gypsy jazz guitar and meditative guitar styles with renowned sacred chant artist Snatam Kaur to audiences of 5,000 people. He recorded on her Grammy-nominated 2018 release "Beloved".
For eight years Stu worked as a professional artist-in-residence at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo NY where he offered healing music and different creative therapies for patient, families and hospital staff. In 2014 he was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to create music & films documenting his work offering healing music at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
Stu continues to offer weekly lessons and music inspiration at his YouTube channel "Ukulele Zen” (www.youtube.com/ukulelezen).
At age 19, Stuart had a chance encounter with with jazz legend Dave Brubeck - a spontaneous jam session where he encountered the spiritual power of music. That experience changed the course of his life forever.
"As we played together I forgot myself entirely...I was was listening with such a relaxed & focused intensity...I felt so supported by Dave and his band. Suddenly, something larger than myself took over and began to play the music for me. I was sitting there and watching it all happen...somehow endless streams of "perfect" music emanated from my hands with zero effort. I had a visceral feeling of being a channel for the music to flow through me. My hands we channeling musical ideas that I couldn't have played if I had practiced them for 10,000 hours!"
That taste of musical nectar so many years ago still inspired Stuart to this day and motivates his performances and his open hearted sharing of a freer and more joyful vision of music education. Stuart tours the globe with his music and innovative music workshops, including "Ukulele Zen" and "Music Improvisation as Spirit Path"
2020 UPDATE:
The year 2019 was a busy one for Stu & Ukulele Zen. Thirty-five (35) events on the road, including Festivals, His own 5 day retreat, concert halls & school residencies...a fulfilling year of work, play & music!
The year 2020 welcomed many new changed & exciting developments!!
1) The birth of Stu & Sarah's son Rowan on Feb 6th!
2) Due to COVID-19, a full & complete pause of all touring dates - trips to Australia Canada, Europe & across No. America...ALL CANCELED.
3) Add those first two up and you get a full-time immersion into fatherhood PLUS an expansion of Stu's Ukulele Zen's online presence.
In 2018, Stu began a Patreon Page to support his You Tube Channel "UKULELE ZEN" offering uke players & fans a low cost monthly membership to support & receive great in-depth ukulele instruction, extras, Uke Tabs, MP3 Jam Tracks & more.
If you're interested in supporting Stu's work & receiving the benefits of being a patron, CLICK HERE TO JOIN. Thank you!
With the new reality of being a teaching artist, a non-touring performer, it is in the online space that Stu EXCELS.
2020 saw the beginning of interactive Ukulele Zen Livestreams & workshops - an online academy is in the works!
Sign the mailing list for news of workshops & e-courses that bring his decades of world class experience at performing, presenting, lecturing & facilitating music.
MORE ABOUT STU FUCHS
With over twenty years of experience in the arts, Stuart has empowered people of all backgrounds to discover their own musicality and to play with greater ease, skill and joy.
Stuart has performed his genre bending ukulele instrumentals and soulful songs at concert halls and festivals across the USA and internationally. He founded and played lead guitar in an award winning quartet "Babik" (Bah-Beek), in which he arranged and performed the gypsy jazz music of Django Reinhardt with symphony orchestras.
Fuchs' concerts are like a combination of a summertime lawn bowling party, a mystical poetry reading in a Bedouin tent, a smoky jazz club, a nuanced recital hall concert, and heart opening meditation class. Audiences laugh, sing and clap along, reflect upon life's mysteries and sometimes even shed a tear.
Shortly after embarking on a solo career In 2012 Stuart become an endorsing Kala Ukulele artist - in 2013 released his debut solo album "Stukulele" and began touring to major ukulele and acoustic music festivals. In 2014 he further expanded his reputation as a teaching artist with appearances at even more festivals, theaters and yoga centers. In 2014, Stuart was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for a ten-day residency to compose and perform healing music for and with cancer patients at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY.
As a practitioner of yogi and meditation for over 20 years, the playful and fun loving Stuart is all about connecting people through music and creative play. He is passionate about encouraging each person to access his or her "inner musician". In his ukulele, guitar and free improvisation classes he weaves very effective teaching tips on effortless instrumental technique with a spirited method of how to break through the limitations to musical freedom. In his workshops participants learn to grasp onto difficult concepts with greater ease and more joy.