Men awaiting trial for charges ranging from dope dealing to murder performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center on Chicago's West Side on Sunday (April 14, 2013). The brainchild of musical director Riccardo Muti, the project saw 10 inmates participating in a weeklong musical workshop at the lockup before performing their own collaborations with the professionals. "This is a wonderful beginning for you and for us," Muti, 71, told the group after the 45-minute performance, "You will join society with the sense of harmony you learned here."

According to the Associated Press, the concert included one composition that began with a double bass playing a Bach cello suite, before quickly changing direction as the inmates began rapping. One sang: "I hope the judge says I served my time. ... I'm praying God gets me out of this jam." Some of the mainly teenage boys' parents were watching from the audience, many in tears. "I learned more about classical music," said an inmate named Ricky, "I'd heard of Beethoven and Bach. I liked it."

Naples-born Muti is no stranger to performing in prisons. He once conducted Robert Schumann's Warum? in a Milan institution. Following the performance in Chicago on Sunday, he reflected philosophically, telling the inmates, "We will meet again in the future.Not here! But on the outside."

The bleak Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center holds around 250 inmates, some of whom aren't yet teenagers.