Summer Experiences

• I was lucky to be the Co-Director of the White Mountain Ukulele Retreat in Albany, NH this past July. This is my first year as an organizer, and it went really well. We had a great crowd and got a lot of good feedback. We're already starting to make plans for next year's event, June 25-28, 2026.

• In the end of July, I went to SummerSongs, an amazing week of community of singers/songwriters in the Hudson Valley of New York State. This is the first time I attended, and it was a transformative experience, and I am a forever grateful for the amazingly supportive community that I've now become a part of. It's really is taking my music in new directions, and I've met so many great other musicians who are helping me in my quest to get better. Expect to see more developments and recordings come collaborations with these wonderful people.

This Fall: Concert, Teaching, Dance, and Theatre

I've got a lot coming up in the next few months.

Concert

I'll be performing this Saturday, September 27 at 2:00 pm at Lexington Porchfest at 164 Grant Street in Lexington, doing a whole bunch of my songs and covers. Please come and sing along! I'll even do requests!

Teaching

I will be on the teaching staff of the new Coastal Ukulele Festival in Cohasset, Massachusetts, Sunday, October 5 from 1:00-5:30 pm. It's a free event, and I'll be teaching my Ukulele Off the Page workshop and also performing in the final concert. Please join me for a fun time!

Dance

For the 17th year, I will be joining Recently Traditional Fictional Morris (RTFM) for our annual Dancing Down the Sun at the Somerville Growing Center on Vinal Avenue in Somerville at Sundown (approximately 5:40 pm) on Halloween, October 31. There will be a Pumpkin Carol sing, followed by the ritual dance, and then a group meditative walk. This will then be followed by the Oxford Street Souling Tour of street theater with the Paper Bag Mummers. How else would you spend a Halloween evening?

Theater

For the 3rd time, I've been cast in the chorus of the Midwinter Revels. We will be presenting 14 performances from December 12-28 at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge. This year's program is a Scandinavian theme, based upon Gregory Maguire’s Matchless. It will have a lot of great Swedish Christmas music, so this is right up my alley. We have just started rehearsals, so I don't know all the things that I will be doing in the performance, but if you're in the audience, I should be quite visible!

Getting through the Hard Times

Like many of you, between some health issues, work related upheavals, and the troubling society, this has been a difficult year. In this time of so much hardship, it can be easy to think that doing creative things is not as important as protesting and fighting. While I agree that's important, this YouTube video makes that case that doing creative work is also part of working towards a better world.

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Thanks for all your support of my creative endeavours, and continue to do yours and spread a little love to others.

Ken Mattsson
BeaconBeats Music

​music@kenmattsson.com​
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