The New England Ukulele Festival has healing at heart
This Sunday, the inaugural
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
As a ukulele instructor at An Unlikely Story in Plainville, Miller often helps adult students — many of whom are 30 or older — learn an instrument for the first time. She likens playing the ukulele to 'a big exhale,' and recognizes the value of bringing that same outlet to medically vulnerable children. When kids are ready to leave a treatment center, their ukulele comes with them, and they can continue their recovery through a free 'UKC At Home' program that offers online lessons and continued work with music therapists.
Advertisement
'It's not just, 'we'll make kids smile for a minute with the ukulele,'' Miller said. 'It's such a durable thing, because you're giving this kid music.'
Even Keith Richards recognizes the impact of the program — the legendary Rolling Stones guitarist has autographed a ukulele
While the festival is free to attend, guests can pitch in for the cause in by purchasing raffle tickets or making donations on site as they enjoy the ukulele groups' sets, a workshop lead by headliner (and Berklee grad)
Advertisement
'The fact that the Ukulele Kids Club is connected to hospitals around here is very meaningful to people,' Miller said. 'They work with Hasbro Children's Hospital, they work with Boston Children's Hospital and Dana-Farber, and people like to know that they're having an impact at home, as well as across the country.'
GIG GUIDE
Newburyport-born actor and artist
On Friday, Lambrini Girls transform their current buzz into their signature buzzsaw-sharp punk at the Center for the Arts at the Armory.
Jessie Morgan
Fresh off the release of a single with Annie Lennox, Allison Russell performs at Royale this Sunday.
Mason Poole
Fresh off the release of a collaborative single with
Advertisement
Passim's Folk Collective — a group of area artists who work to diversify the club's programming — host their annual showcase on
At MGM Music Hall at Fenway, Nigerian artist
—
who scored a major hit with
Highlights from a busy week at Brighton Music Hall include the contemporary R&B of
(ironically from England) on
Advertisement
The 20th anniversary edition of Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings' album 'Naturally" arrives this Friday.
Daptone Recording
NOW SPINNING
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings,
Dope Lemon's latest record is a sonic alloy that's worth its weight in indie rock gold.
Daniel Mayne
Dope Lemon,
The sophomore LP from Model/Actriz delivers a decadent, often industrial twist on post-punk.
Kane Ocean
Model/Actriz,
BONUS TRACK
This season's 'American Idol' hopefuls have a friend in
Advertisement
Victoria Wasylak can be reached at
. Follow her on Bluesky @VickiWasylak.bsky.social.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
The Weeknd on the ‘Deeply Psychological, Emotional Ride' Behind the Music in His ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow' Film
The following story contains spoilers from Hurry Up Tomorrow. Four months after The Weeknd released his Billboard 200-topping album Hurry Up Tomorrow, XO fans are finally able to watch the film that inspired its inception in theaters, starting Friday (May 16). More from Billboard The Weeknd Reveals 'Hurry Up Tomorrow' Album 'Didn't Exist' Before the Film 'American Idol': How to Watch Season 23 Finale Online REI Anniversary Sale: Shop the 20 Best Tech, Clothing & Outdoor Deals for Up to 30% Off Directed by Trey Edward Shults, Hurry Up Tomorrow follows a fictional version of the superstar (also named Abel) who's 'plagued by insomnia' and 'is pulled into an odyssey with a stranger who begins to unravel the very core of his existence,' according to the official synopsis. But what's soundtracking his nightmarish journey digs even deeper into The Weeknd's lore. 'Wake Me Up,' the Justice-featuring synth-pop album opener, also serves as the film's opening 'concert song.' The show The Weeknd performs at a that looks identical to the ones he held in Brazil and Australia last fall, where he wore a black and gold kaba — a hand-embroidered Ethiopian robe historically worn by royals and traditionally worn at weddings — and sang atop a rock-hewn church, resembling Lalibela, in the northern region of his motherland. He debuted 'Wake Me Up' at his São Paulo show in September. 'We always wanted a performance song that we can open the film with, and in the vein of a pop record, and 'Wake Me Up' was the inspiration,' The Weeknd tells Billboard. He performs the song again at a different concert later in the film, where he ends up losing his voice – mimicking The Weeknd's real-life experience at Inglewood's SoFi Stadium in September 2022, when he had to cut his concert short for the same reason. That incident, as well as The Weeknd's sleep paralysis diagnosis, are key influences in Hurry Up Tomorrow. The film's Oscar-winning sound designer Johnnie Burn says they remixed the first 'Wake Me Up' performance in the film '35 times, trying to get the balance of how much crowd sound you would hear, how the music would come across. Are you hearing it from Abel's perspective? We tried that. Are you hearing it from the audience's perspective? No. Are you hearing it from a deeply psychological, emotional ride? Yeah, you are.' Burn, who says he went from 'dancing around my kitchen to Abel's music' as a fan to 'dancing around the mixing room' with the man himself, says the process involved everything from asking Mike Dean for 'a new synth line that sounds a bit more live' to miking The Weeknd while he recorded new lyrics that better suited the storyline. When The Weeknd was changing up a few lyrics during the cutaways, 'I said, 'Well, you're probably in quite an adrenaline state when you go out in front of 80,000 people.' So I made him do push-ups to get kind of worked up,' Burn recalls with a chuckle. 'He was like, 'What, now?' And I was like, 'Yeah, get down and give me 20.'' Burn says the song that required the most fine-tuning was the cathartic centerpiece 'Hurry Up Tomorrow,' which The Weeknd explains was inspired by the titular track from Robert Altman's 1973 satirical noir film The Long Goodbye, because of how frequently it appears. 'You hear it throughout the entire film, different iterations of it. You hear it on the radio, you hear a pop version of it, subjectively in the score, diegetically, a mariachi band will sing it every time he goes to Mexico. And I wanted to do that with 'Hurry Up Tomorrow,'' he explains. Abel first plays Anima (played by Jenna Ortega) a stripped-down draft of it off his phone in a hotel room. Moved to tears, Anima admits she relates to its autobiographical lyrics — because her father left when she was a kid, her mother struggled to raise her alone and she abandoned home to forge her own path that's fraught with inescapable loneliness. The next morning, Abel turns around while sitting on the hotel bed and faintly hears Anima singing some of the first verse in the shower behind closed doors. He later encounters his younger self, who's swaddled in a gabi, a white handwoven Ethiopian cotton blanket, and singing a few lines in Amharic, the primary language of Ethiopia. But after Anima douses him and the hotel bed he's tied to with gasoline — and right as she holds a lighter above him — Abel belts an a cappella version that feels like he is literally singing for his life: 'So burn me with your light/ I have no more fights left to win/ Tie me up to face it, I can't run away, and/ I'll accept that it's the end.' 'You're seeing the making of it, not literally me making it, but the themes and the concept and the melody and the soul of it is being made throughout the film. By the end of it, it's fully blossomed into this song, which essentially is what the film is saying,' says The Weeknd, who adds that he had 'to finish the lyrics the night before I had to perform it at the end.' But outside of the Hurry Up Tomorrow tracks, fans will be surprised to hear two earlier songs from The Weeknd's discography in the film: his 2021 blockbuster hit 'Blinding Lights' – which is the top Billboard Hot 100 song of all time – and 'Gasoline,' the first track from his 2022 album Dawn FM. Anima analyzes the emptiness and heartache in the songs as she hysterically lip-syncs and dances to them, and she later questions Abel if he's the true toxic subject behind his music. 'What I am doing by the end of the film is, I'm lighting my persona up on fire. But to tap into that, you need to go into the back catalog a little bit, and take in what I'm saying in some of these lyrics and how they're masked by pop elements,' he says. 'It's always been a joke that joke with The Weeknd music, where it makes you sing and dance and it feels jolly. And then when you actually get into the themes of it, it's something much deeper — and maybe a call for help, who knows. That's how [Anima's] reading it, and essentially forcing myself to face myself.' There are other callbacks to his catalog in the sound design. The guttural shrieks heard right after Anima swings a champagne bottle over Abel's head and knocks him out when he first tries leaving the hotel room sound reminiscent of the title track of his 2013 debut studio album Kiss Land. The 'Easter eggs,' as Burn calls them, extend beyond the film — as fans pointed out online that the ending of 'Hurry Up Tomorrow,' which serves as the final track of The Weeknd's album, seamlessly transitions into the beginning of 'High For This,' the first track off his 2011 debut mixtape House of Balloons. While Hurry Up Tomorrow bids farewell to the character Abel Tesfaye has played for over a decade, it also underscores the long-standing symbiotic relationship between music and film in The Weeknd's world. 'When you hear the screams in the record and you hear all these horror references and you feel scared, listen to the music — because I want you to feel what I'm feeling. Kiss Land is like a horror movie,' The Weeknd told Complex in his first-ever interview back in 2013. 'We wanted to do something we've never seen or heard on screen before,' he says now. 'We were able to do these big swings, and I think they landed well in the film. I'm really proud of the music, and I'm proud of the sonics of it. It's much different from the album. It's like its own experience.' Best of Billboard Kelly Clarkson, Michael Buble, Pentatonix & Train Will Bring Their Holiday Hits to iHeart Christmas Concert Fox Plans NFT Debut With $20 'Masked Singer' Collectibles 14 Things That Changed (or Didn't) at Farm Aid 2021
New York Post
11 hours ago
- New York Post
Mommy blogger Candice Miller deactivates Instagram days after posting for the first time since husband's suicide
Hamptons mommy blogger Candice Miller deactivated the Instagram account that made her famous just days after she posted for the first time since her husband's shock suicide last year. The mom of two — who was saddled with hubby Brandon Miller's nearly $33.6 million debt following his death — shut down the Instagram account for Mama & Tata, the luxury lifestyle blog that she ran with her sister documenting their ritzy lives. Earlier this week, Miller returned to Instagram and posted a photo of the sun glaring over the ocean with a cryptic quote attributed to French philosopher Albert Camus. Candice Miller was saddled with her late husband Brandon Miller's nearly $33.6 million debt following his death. Bre Johnson/ / Shutterstock 'In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer,' the caption read. 'And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger – something better, pushing right back.' Miller's husband Brandon, a high-profile New York real estate developer, poisoned himself in the garage of their Hamptons home over the 4th of July weekend last year as he secretly battled a mountain of debt totaling $33.6 million. At the time of his death, the 44-year-old had just $8,000 in the bank. After Brandon's death, Miller sold their Hamptons estate for $12.8 million and resettled with her two daughters in Miami, Florida, where she is working on rebuilding her life.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Carrie Underwood Shares Photo Updates on Adorable New Family Member
Carrie Underwood Shares Photo Updates on Adorable New Family Member originally appeared on Parade. Carrie Underwood is quite the animal lover and just can't stop collecting new pets. The American Idol winner turned judge has three adopted dogs that she likes to share with fans. The first two, Zero and Penny, she's had for years. Then, in 2023, she added Charlie to the mix. They've also started taking in farm animals and have plenty of room to do it since Underwood and her family live on 400 acres in Tennessee. The latest additions to her furry family are two adorable lambs named Cuz and Baby J, who have been born on the farm. On Thursday, June 5, the "Jesus, Take the Wheel" singer shared two new photos of the lambs on her Instagram stories—and they are beyond cute. The first photo shows both of the babies enjoying some time in the pasture, while the second photo is a close-up of Jamal a.k.a. Baby J, who is about two weeks old now. Baby J from Carrie Underwood's farm is growing so fast! — Who Said What? (@whosaid_what4) June 6, 2025 Just a couple of weeks ago, Underwood shared the first photos of Baby J when he was first born. She chose the name because he was born on American Idol finale night, the same night Jamal Roberts took the crown. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Carrie Underwood (@carrieunderwood) It's great to get an update on Baby J and see how much he's grown in just two short weeks! 🎬SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬 Carrie Underwood Shares Photo Updates on Adorable New Family Member first appeared on Parade on Jun 5, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 5, 2025, where it first appeared.
