(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – Stuart Fuchs, Michael Eck, and the Ladies Auxiliary Ukulele Orchestra headline the fifth annual Berkshire County Uke Fest at the Waubeeka Country Club on Sunday, November 1, 2015, from 3pm to 7pm.

Headliner Stuart Fuchs is a multi-instrumentalist, recording artist, sound healer and innovative and compassionate teacher. Fuchs has performed his genre bending ukulele instrumentals and soulful songs with symphony orchestras, and at concert halls and music festivals internationally. He is a lifelong minstrel and plays a wide variety of styles of music on acoustic guitar, ukulele and the Australian didjeridoo. His music draws upon a wide range of styles including folk, classical, gypsy jazz, rock, avant garde, sacred and world music.

In another time, roots scholar and multi-instrumentalist Michael Eck might have been a “songster,” traversing local counties with a bag of ballads, blues and spirituals, some borrowed, some stolen and some written on the fly. Eck is the curator and host of WAMC’s American Roots Series at WAMC’s The Linda, as well as a longtime board member Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He is deeply invested in the upstate New York folk scene as a performer, presenter and chronicler, but he has little patience with pure tradition, seeing the great river of American song as an ever-flowing, meandering stream. He has performed onstage with Pete Seeger, Patti Smith, John Sebastian, 10,000 Maniacs’ Robert Buck, Peter Case, Happy Traum, Jason Ringenberg, Butch Hancock, Leigh Gibson and Lonesome Val, among others; and has recorded with Aimee Mann, Jon Brion and Warner Brothers Records President Dan McCarroll.

Formed in 1994, Berkshire County’s Ladies Auxiliary Ukulele Orchestra  is an ongoing collaborative. Current members include national touring artist  and educator Bernice Lewis, educator Berni McMahon, Dale Ott on bass, and Mariah Colorado. The Ladies Auxiliary Ukulele Orchestra performs carefully selected originals as well as re-invented standard favorites. Their set list features songs from every musical era, ranging from Mozart to the Andrews Sisters, from Led Zeppelin to Radiohead.

Badeleine Madeleine (Hartwick College 2011) plays ukulele with an energetic and original style that is contagious to her audience. Her original songs are inspired and honest, richly layered in textures and composition. When not composing and playing music, Madeleine grows beautiful food in the Hudson Valley.

Mariah Colorado is currently a sophomore at Miss Hall’s School in Pittsfield, Mass.  Still in her teens, she is a prolific songwriter and performs solo on piano, as as well as part of the Ladies Auxiliary Ukulele Orchestra.

The Waubeeka Country Club, 137 New Ashford Rd (Rte 7, just south of the intersection of Route 43)