Music Therapist Kimberly Khare received a grant to buy a professional microphone for a new recording studio built for Next Step, a Cambridge-based nonprofit that supports young adults with cancer and other life threatening illnesses.

For these young people who had aged out of support opportunities for children, there was no “next step” until Bill Kubicek founded one in 2001 with a mission of “shattering limitations and elevating aspirations.”     

Kimberly, who is director of Song.Studio, director of music therapy for Community Music Center of Boston and assistant professor of music therapy at Berklee College of Music, said that the mic was one of the last and most important pieces to be installed at the studio where these young adults will record the songs that they and others have written:  “The mic is the most pivotal tool in the recording chain as it captures the artists’ voices, their meaning, their souls.”

Kimberly and her wife, Lorrie Kubicek, who was Emily’s music therapist at MGH, are the driving forces behind the musical aspect of Next Step and are working on a pilot project to bring young adults in treatment at MGH to write and record at the studio.

Lorrie said that buying the mic in Emily’s name was “the perfect gesture.”  She remembers when Emily sang “Gold Digger” into the tiny mic on her headphones while she was in treatment. 

“Emily’s sequined ball cap would be popping,” Lorrie says, if she could have used a mic like this one.