Did you ever wonder about life relationships and events that present themselves to you? Sometimes I find myself asking, “Where did this come from?” or “How did I get into this?” To be honest, an opportunity to begin a prison choir hit me on the head when I wasn’t looking. Starting an all-male prison choir was not exactly on my list of Top 10 aspirations in life. It wasn’t on my bucket list. Would this count toward my college’s yearly Professional Activities Report? But, there it was, in its simplest, purest form, at a Cleveland Indians baseball game.
My husband and I were being treated to free suite tickets at Progressive Field. We were joining others in a suite for a fully-catered baseball game “experience” with all the amenities. We went to see how “others” might experience a baseball game, rather than sitting atop of a stadium in the cheap seats (like us). Of course, we could not pass up this opportunity. We chit-chatted with strangers; we chit-chatted with the occasional acquaintance. Uninterested in the game, I found a colleague who was eager to tell me about the Shakespeare prison program that had become her retirement project. This Emerita Professor of English had founded the program, Oberlin Drama at Grafton (ODAG). For two years, she and her collegiate student teachers engaged those incarcerated at the Grafton Correctional Institution (GCI) and the Grafton Reintegration Center (GRC) in performing Shakespearean (and other) plays. Her excitement was palpable. She was telling me how the “residents” (the term used to refer to those incarcerated at the GCI) wanted to have a professionally-led choir at their prison. She asked me if I knew anyone who might be interested in conducting such a choir. No sooner had she iterated that sentence, she looked at me and said something to the effect of, “Of course. YOU! You conduct choirs!”
My inside dialog consisted of: “What?”, “Me?”, “I couldn’t do this” and “Hmm…,” “This could be interesting!”, “A prison choir? Would I be safe?”, “Why not?”, and “Wait until my husband hears about this (giggle, giggle)!” She had known, to some extent, that I was seeking to re-envision myself as a mid-career collegiate musician educator. But this? Where did this opportunity come from? The old adage just might be true: “When you least expect it…” To expand that notion, let me say, “When you least expect it, opportunities find YOU.” Would I take on the challenge? This opportunity was a complete surprise, or was this the “something” that I was consciously or subconsciously seeking to find?
Singing Behind Bars 