Eric Hartley: 'Took me back to a good place'

The notes of Bach's "French Suite No. 5" floated up to the skylights, the pure sound filling the tiny room.

Sitting at her black Steinway, world-class pianist Simone Dinnerstein, who has topped the Billboard classical chart, played to a unique audience: about 40 inmates of the Maryland Correctional Institution - Women, which sits in Jessup on the western edge of Anne Arundel County.

For people who've made mistakes in life, been dealt a bad hand or more likely both, Friday morning's performance was a moment, however brief, of grace, beauty and even escape. It was hard to remember we were behind razor-wire fences.

"It took me back to a good place," a woman named Heather said as she wiped away tears after the performance. (Prison officials asked that inmates' full names not be used unless they had been cleared to speak to the media.)

Dinnerstein, 37, who lives in New York and went to The Juilliard School, has played at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. Tonight she plays a Mozart concerto with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; in a couple of weeks she plays in Vienna, Austria.

On Friday, she played on a linoleum floor in front of a prison library reference desk with a small handwritten sign reading, "Library. No noise pls."

It looked for all the world like an elementary school media center, with the "READ" posters featuring celebrities like race-car driver Danica Patrick and another with the television cartoon family "The Wild Thornberrys" that said "Swing Into Books."

The inmates came in about 11 a.m., wearing blue denim D.O.C. shirts or gray sweatshirts, and sat in rows of small institutional black chairs. They ranged from 20-ish to perhaps 60-something. After hearing the performer was one of the top classical artists in the world, several quietly said, "Wow!"

Introducting one piece, Dinnerstein explained her love of Bach with a comment that had a special meaning for this audience: "For me, I find his music really takes me to another place."

Dinnerstein played Schubert's "Impromptu," then the longer Bach piece. The audience seemed rapt, but their faces were hard to read. Were they actually bored and just being polite? (After all, this was literally a captive audience.)

Hardly. After the performance, many stood to applaud, a few wiped away tears and the questions flowed: How long have you been playing? Do your fingers get tired? Who were your musical influences? What kind of lessons did you have? What do the pedals do? Do you still get nervous before concerts? (Sometimes, she admitted.)

One woman, Shaunte, said she closed her eyes while listening and imagined she was hearing her 12-year-old daughter, who plays piano.

"She was fantastic," said another woman, Esther. "I could just close my eyes and feel every note."

An inmate said her daughter plays cello and asked Dinnerstein to recommend some pieces. Dinnerstein said she'll send some of her CDs for the prison library, including one where she duets with a cellist. That drew cheers.

As inmates lined up for autographs afterward, more than one expressed gratitude and surprise that a famous musician took the time to visit a prison. One said she'd never heard classical music live before and spoke with awe of the stories of joy and pain she heard in the music.

The women seemed grateful to be seen as human beings worthy of great art. More than one noted that not every inmate's story is as simple as a drug addiction and a life of crime.

"There's doctors and lawyers in here," Esther noted with a grin.

Sure, all this talk of the power of music can get a little corny. Music itself doesn't solve things. These women all went back to prison cells Friday night, and their problems are still waiting for them on the outside.

"We run the risk of seeming patronizing: 'Oh, isn't it nice that we come here?' " said Laura Farmer, a Baltimore Symphony Orchestra spokeswoman.

The Division of Correction, of course, also tries to help inmates with more concrete issues: how to get a job once you're out, for example. The employment center is just off the library where Dinnerstein played.

But art has an intangible value of its own. Music, like literature, allows you to see beyond yourself and your present circumstances. Many prisoners could use a bit more culture and empathy in their lives. But then, so could a lot of people out here.

Farmer said part of the BSO's mission is outreach to people who don't ordinarily listen to classical music. Orchestra members have played in shopping malls and the lobby of the National Institutes of Health. They played Handel's "Water Music" on the waterfront at Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

Separately, Dinnerstein has played at schools; a foster home; and seven years ago, a men's prison in Louisiana.

"(Music) has the possibility to transcend," Farmer said. "So I think bringing art to people who are confined within walls - I hope this will help them go beyond these walls."