A juvenile detention center isn’t a typical setting for a classical quartet, but when one shows up to play for students, they do a whole lot more than just play.
Thick brick walls may not make for the best acoustics for performing live music, but to the audience behind the multiple locked doors, the sound from the Tetra String Quartet is more than a welcome one.
For the musicians, The Maricopa County Juvenile Detention Center has been a regular gig for Tetra for nearly a decade.
ABC15 can’t disclose the identity of the students but one said when he saw their instruments, his first impression was, ‘What the heck?’
After their visit, he realized what it means to them to have live music just feet from their jail cell.
”[They] started playing their instruments and it was such a morale booster, dang it’s so good to listen to music,” he said.
Jenna Dalbey is an original member of the Quartet that started in 2010.
”We were really curious about how to bring music to communities not typically served by musicians,” said Dalbey.
They can take nearly any popular song and play it to engage an audience.
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They seek a stage where you may least suspect a classical quartet, like an underserved school where they’ll draw students in with Taylor Swift or the theme from Bluey, then turn their performance into music or history lesson.
What Tetra does at the detention center reached a new depth with the students when Valley rapper Colby Jeffers sat in with Tetra.
The prompt Jeffers gave students was to reflect on themselves, their surroundings and solutions to make a better life in the future.
Answering those three questions made for the start of the poem, or in this case – a rap.
First, Tetra lays down the beat. A few rhymes later, students are empowered by having a live band play behind a few bars of their own lyrics.
”Every young person has potential to do something with their life, create change, express something powerful,” said Jeffers.
”It’s so empowering for youth to know, I can create, I have a voice, what I say matters, what I think matters, then they’ll be motivated to put good things in the world,” said Heidi Wright of the quartet.
Undivided attention — that’s all it took for some of these students to think about doing right by themselves, in hopes of bringing that good to someone else.
”It made me feel a little better about myself, that we’re criminals or monsters. It felt good to know there are people out there that still care for us,” said one of the students.
