Friday, December 5th didn’t unfold like a typical afternoon at Rikers. For a moment, one could forget the metal gates and abrasive light, the keys clacking as they swung from belt loops, because something more promising hung in the air: the anticipation of music. Outside Rikers, Professor Audrey Amsellem, program coordinator Mia Ruyter, and Music Humanities’s TAs, Kenza Chraibi, Avery Pratho and Maddox Weckerle-Dietz met up with musicians from Jazz at Lincoln Center. The group included Charles Turner, a magnetic vocalist in an eccentric beret, David Kay, a piano player with an endearingly expressive face, James Robbins, a bassist who carried his instrument with much tenderness, and drummer Kevin Congleton, who kept everyone on time. We gathered our IDs and permission badges and began the slow, careful work of moving the concert toward Rose M. Singer Center, the women’s facility on Rikers Island

On the bus together, our bodies swayed as the city behind us receded into gray water and barbed wire. When I spoke with the musicians, they told me this visit was a ritual for them, a date they held in the year and looked forward to every time. They added that this was their first time playing in the women’s facility, and for a moment, they found themselves imagining what it would be like to play for a different crowd. The thought made all of us visibly excited.

Once we stepped into the gymnasium, a few students from Music Humanities were already there, talking over one another with the kind of electric energy that made the room feel brighter. I asked one student how she felt about the upcoming concert, and she was blunt without hesitation. “Jazz is my favorite kind of music, but it’s hard to get right.” The music hadn’t started yet, but after meeting the musicians, I felt a quiet certainty that they were going to “get it right.” Soon after, people from other housing units trickled through the doors, and suddenly the gymnasium didn’t feel like a gym at all, but a music hall bursting with life.

The band began with something familiar to every New Yorker in the room—“Take the A Train”—and then smoothly transitioned to “Cheek to Cheek.” Almost immediately, heads started bobbing, people grooved in their seats, clapped on the beat, sang along when they caught the words, and a few even stood up to dance. The ensemble followed with “Moody’s Mood for Love” a vocally acrobatic challenge for the vocalist who was eager to perform it once he heard we had studied it in class. The concert quickly became symbiotic—the musicians gave the room their energy, the room gave it right back, and the exchange kept building with each side complementing the other.

Midway through another Duke Ellington hit, “Caravan,” Charles took one of the students up on a previous claim: she, too, is a musician. He invited her to share the stage and encouraged her to perform a rap song she wrote. She was clearly an artist—her clothes were hand painted with an image that looked like a young girl—and at first she hesitated under all the attention. The rhythm section held her up with a steady beat, giving her somewhere to land, and she began to rap a piece called “Mama Please,” a story drawn from her life, the streets, and incarceration. As she sang, the energy shifted—everyone was fully locked in, listening with care and admiration. By the time she finished, the crowd and the band were visibly stunned, and she was met with a standing ovation.

The band ended their performance with “The Christmas Song,” and the vocalist sent the room off with a generous roll call of celebration: “Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Kwanzaa,” a beautiful acknowledgment of the different faiths and backgrounds gathered in the gymnasium that day. It was a fitting ending to an afternoon that felt genuinely unifying and, if only for a moment, made us feel bigger than the space we were in.