Visit with Ken in Lucca

We travel ...

to expand our perspective and some places are very rich in potential. Whatever the reason, Lucca has history, culture, environment, stimulating people and musical credentials. The city generously offers to share these assets with its citizens and it is cosmopolitan center that extends a friendly welcome to all. It is a located in Tuscany close to both Florence on its West and Pisa on its East. It was from Florence as a base that I used to delve into important regions featured in the Dumas classic, Count of Monte Cristo. While staying at Palmerino, an artistic collective in Florence, I wrote a one-man musical play called Count of Monte Cristo and Me, that includes 10 songs that I sing and accompany on ukulele. This musical journey follows the path chartered in the book and has been enriching in many ways. I only occasionally perform the entire play, but I continually play the 10 songs from the play and that process was influential in my adopting the format of KenTen concerts. This is a format which I often depend on at the UKEHUT performance space in New York, where I select "greatest hits" from my songbook of more than 100 original tunes. So here I sit now in Lucca with my songbook, my ukulele and a selection of songs that I still enjoy playing regularly. On my Apple computer, I installed the latest version of Logic and have recorded 5 new albums of songs that reflect various stages of my past. Each of the following web pages is dedicated to one of these albums and I invite you to share those songs with me. To friends, past, present and future!