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.
Riccardo Muti at the Detention Center concert
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.
"This is a wonderful beginning for you and for us," Muti, 71, told the group after the 45-minute performance ended. "You will join society with the sense of harmony you learned here."
One composition began with a double bass playing a Bach cello suite. It changed direction jarringly a minute later as the teen inmates joined in rapping. One sang about his legal plight: "I hope the judge says I served my time ... I'm praying God gets me out of this jam."
