An Associated Press report by Michael Tarm published Sunday (4/14) in the Washington Post and a number of other media outlets, states, “Strains of classical music echoed on Sunday—not inside an august concert hall—but in a bleak Chicago jail where the mostly teenage boys await trial on charges ranging from dope dealing to murder. The concert was part of a unique outreach that’s the brainchild of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s musical director, the Italian-born Riccardo Muti, who attended the event at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center on Chicago’s West Side. The concert included half a dozen of the orchestra’s members. But the center-stage performers were some 10 inmates who participated in a weeklong musical workshop at the lockup. It culminated in the Sunday concert featuring compositions the inmates wrote in collaboration with the professionals. … Some of the boys’ parents sat in the audience, several with tears in their eyes. When one of the organizers announced the inmates and their families will receive CD recordings of the concert, one mother buried her head in her hands.”
Posted April 17, 2013
