ROC City Concert brings live music into the Monroe County Jail

ROCHESTER, N.Y. ( WROC ) — The sounds of strings, piano keys, and a strong, steady opera singer’s voice float around the hall Friday at the Monroe County Jail’s Veterans Housing and Rehabilitation Unit. A gift of music granted to the men incarcerated there.

“Never did I expect I’d wake up on a random Friday morning to music like that. It was amazing,” says Quentin Marozzi, one of the men in the rehab unit.

The jail opened its doors to five chamber music performers from the Eastman School of Music and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra as part of an enrichment effort for the unit. It’s the first time ever civilians have been invited to perform at the jail.

“Of course people think you’re crazy when you want to set something like this up, because security is the number one concern,” says Joel Yager, the director of drug and alcohol rehabilitation and reentry programs at Monroe County Jail.

“This is an actual in-house drug and alcohol program and a veterans program. So a lot of these guys are struggling. Most of the crimes that they committed were all drug related crimes. We are trying to promote recovery and sobriety in a way that they don’t have to go out and get high to have fun,” Yager explains to News 8’s Mikhaela Singleton .

The performance is part of the ROC City Concerts series — an effort to bring music to underserved populations in the City of Rochester. It’s made possible by an endowment from the John and Mary Celentano Chamber Music Fund.

“[John] left all his money to the school, and he earmarked a certain portion of that specifically for going out into the community and performing. I thought about the people in Rochester that don’t have access to live music — that are underserved, that are marginalized, that can’t go to a concert,” says Elinor Freer, the ROC City Concerts coordinator and an associate professor of piano and chamber music at Eastman.

For close to an hour, the performers used their violin, cello, piano, french horn, and singing voice to introduce their unique audience to a wide range of classical music that the men admit many of them had never heard before.

“I would never think that I’d be interested in classical music. I didn’t expect to witness something so beautiful like that, and I know that the other guys in there—how their reaction was—is feeling the same way,” says Marozzi. “It’s amazing. I won’t ever forget it. I hope they come back.”

“It’s very moving for us to transmit that music to people like this and have them respond to it. It’s the ultimate gift as a musician to be able to do that,” says Freer.

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