There was audience chatter last Thursday in the nearly sold out event in the Pasquerila Performing Arts Center before a British voice boomed through speakers followed by the peaceful tunes made by seven ukulele’s playing parts at once.

The United Kingdom Ukulele Orchestra opened to offer good music, laughs and beautiful singing with their “I Got Uke Babe!” tour.

Pitt-Johnstown students were admitted to the event for free by showing student identification cards.

The group began their performance with “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” by Grieg arr Moss. The song started off peacefully, then player Stuart Crout began to head bang to the music and the women in the group also joined in a head banging frenzy.

“I really liked the music. My favorite song was ‘Good Vibrations’,” student Katie Manges said.

The music varied from a song from the Disney movie, “The Jungle Book”, to one of their last songs, “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

In between each song, commentary by some of the players made the audience members laugh.

When introducing the song “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell, player Lesley Cunningham comically made fun of Canada, because Mitchell is Canadian.

“Canada is one of North America’s fugitive states, full of beefcakes on horses, all ripped. I just want to eat them up,” Cunningham said.

“Oh, and also, Canada is filled with the unwanted French people.”

They also sang and played the song that was the first music video ever to be played on MTV, “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

Player Peter Baynes said get that, MTV once playied music videos.

Audience participation was part of their performance, more specifically during the song “I Wanna Be Like You,” from the Disney movie “The Jungle Book.”

Initially, director Peter Moss had the audience copy his “Ba do bops” and then  split the men and women up, somehow turning the women’s part to a rendition of “Single Ladies” by Beyoncé.

Then, when player Sarah Dale caught an audience member still singing correctly, she jokingly told him to come back with her so they could explore some scat singing together.

Senior Jordan Noble said she, too, enjoyed the event.

During the song “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson, player Alex Gold slipped on a white sparkly glove and fedora reminiscent of Jackson.

Initially, Gold began to play along to the song and then put his ukulele down and moonwalked across the front of the stage, making gestures similar to one’s Jackson would perform.

“I thought they were funny, I never thought that you could play that kind of music on the ukulele and create such awesome sound,” Noble said.

Student Kayla Loukas said that she is in concert band and thought this whole event was very cool.

The group playing finished off with a “simple song”, Bohemian Rhapsody.