The New York Ukulele School was started in 2007 by Mark Michaels, a musician and music educator with over 25 years of experience. Equally adept on ukulele, guitar and bass in pop, rock, blues, folk, jazz, and country, Mark has been involved in music education since the 70's, and was instrumental in developing online instruction for guitar and piano in the '90s. Mark has been featured in Newsday, Billboard, The Hartford Courant and Variety, leading the life of a journeyman musician, from accompanying blues great Freddie King at 19 years of age to playing with Madonna in the early days of her career to playing folk great Phil Ochs' guitarist in the film "Chords of Fame." He also produced and composed the #12 hit dance single in 1979, “Umbrella Man," which Billboard magazine called “sharp…concise…a mastermind.” The New York Ukulele School offers instruction in all styles of ukulele. Study on your own instrument or take a lesson on one of our soprano or tenor ukes if it's inconvenient for you to bring yours to the lesson. Learn to play the songs you've been singing and listening to OTHERS sing, reduce your stress level and become an overall happier, cooler person. We GUARANTEE that you'll be playing better after just one lesson; just read our students' endorsements page to see how they rave about our instruction.

Aaron teaches our weekend lessons and classes and our "in-home" lessons and is a superb instructor. He recently received ASCAP's composer award and we are very proud of his accomplishments. He is the resident composer for The Chelsea Symphony, the pianist for the NYC Gay Men's Chorus, a staff pianist and vocal coach at Mannes College of Music and he also plays ukulele and piano and sings with the two bands Fein and Dandee and Les Faux Amis. And if that's not enough, Aaron is also an architect, trained at Columbia University. He holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania where he was a Benjamin Franklin Scholar and is a member of American Mensa. So we are very lucky indeed to have Aaron on board as one of our ukulele teachers!