Recording artist Shari Ulrich moved to Bowen Island with her daughter Julia and Julia's dad when Julia was three years old. Within a year, Julia was starting piano lessons with Sandy Melody and violin with Alison Nixon. Her classmate in piano was Teddy Littlemore.
Ulrich could never have dreamed that 18 years later she would be touring with professional musicians Julia Graff and Ted Littlemore as her band and both would be students at McGill.
"I've never had so much fun touring, and the musicianship of "The Kids", as I call them, is so inspiring to me," she says.
Nor could Shari have imagined that the son she gave up for adoption at 16 would be in her life 27 years later, and that Mike would be part of the band playing percussion whenever he could escape his job as an architect in Eugene, Oregon.
Shari, Julia, Ted and Mike will be on stage at Cates Hill Chapel on Sunday, July 10, at 7 p.m. with Shari on piano, guitar, violin, mandolin and dulcimer; Julia on violin, accordion, piano, guitar, mandolin, harmonica and vocals; Ted on piano, accordion and vocals; and Mike Magee on Cajon.
The concert marks a perfect wrap up event for the Write On Bowen weekend.
It is a stop on an extensive summer tour in support of Shari's recent release, "Find Our Way", her seventh solo album, and her 19th including her work with Pied Pumkin, UHF, and her recent collaboration with Barney Bentall and Tom Taylor.
Ulrich is a Juno award winner and BC Entertainment Hall of Fame Inductee. She has been an unflagging fixture in Canadian music since the early 70s.
She was first heard in the quirky and beloved Pied Pumkin playing fiddle, mandolin, dulcimer, flute and sax. Her defection to the Hometown Band and a high profile launch to national recognition sparked her solo career as a singer songwriter - a career that has no spanned almost four decades.
Through that, her love of creating and performing music has never waned.
