NORWAY – A practical man who also knew how to make a violin sing, William Turell told his teenage daughter he would pay for her education to become a dental lab technician, like him.

“I wanted to study music,” Mary Hargreaves recalled in a recent interview, adding that her mother, a registered nurse who played the piano, also supported a more stable vocation for her.

So the Turells instilled in Hargreaves the primacy of solid work before the arts, a common leaning in the family toward industriousness. Hargreaves’ grandfather, a Lithuanian immigrant with a flair for polkas, owned a general market in Brockton, Mass. Despite the musicality that beat in Hargreaves, she headed to dental school and then worked in a dentist’s office for 30 years.

No longer.

“So now I am following my passion, my lifetime dream, and I’m going back to the arts, music and poetry,” said Hargreaves, who is in her 50s. She lives in Sumner with her husband, an auto-body damage appraiser. They have three grown children.

Last July, she put away forever her dental smocks, retiring from Crossway Family Dental in Paris. Hargreaves now wears Hawaiian-print shirts when she works.

The flowery prints accompany her mahogany custom-made ukulele, a fairly uncommon instrument with ties to the tropics. It originated in Portugal to accompany sailors, and was absorbed into the Hawaiian culture in the 19th century.

Although the ukulele is a rather simple instrument with just four strings, it does have a whiff of melancholy, harking back to its origins.

“It has a lonely sound to it. When I play minor chords, it makes me imagine I’m on one of those boats,” Hargreaves said. “It has a haunting or calling sound to it, a melancholy sound to it. Sailors were sort of yearning for home.”

But those are the rare chords, because Hargreaves wants to make uplifting music. Although she has played the guitar and piano since she was a child, she has only been playing the ukulele for five years.

“I’m letting out some of the joy in my life,” Hargreaves said. “I’m expressing joy, because for so many years I held it inside and I’m coming out of my shell.”

Her brother was killed riding his bicycle when he was 11. Shortly after, her mother became so ill with a severe form of arthritis that she became housebound and dependent on family caregivers, including Hargreaves, who was just a child at the time.

The presence of opposites is a theme running through Hargreaves’ CD, too, according to the two musicians who have worked on it.

“The thing is, it is a four-string instrument, like the bass,” said Dave Kent, a 50-year-old bass player from Bath who plays with Hargreaves. “I play an electric bass. It is both ends of the spectrum, yet they’re both common, it’s a top and bottom. It is sort of like the jazz duo, the jazz duo is upright bass and the piano, like that, it has a full sound.”

Earl Bigelow, who produced Hargreaves’ first CD, “Love is Strong,” also commented on the album’s polarity. The album was released last spring.

“What was particularly unique was the blending of my musical taste. I like the big-ethereal sounds,” Bigelow said. He has a studio in Bath. “Mary plays the ukulele, a limited instrument. Her desire was to keep it as organic and simplistic as possible. This album is the blending of the two, so both ends are met.”

Binary opposites aside, Hargreaves has just one goal in mind.

“I think my endeavor is just to try to make the world a little bit better for people,” she said. “I think music is one of the best medicines after laughter. I think it is very healing.”

She will be at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 10, at Books-N-Things on Main Street in Norway; and from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 11, at the Carriage House Cafe in Livermore.