"Most people take piano lessons as a child, not as a middle-aged woman in prison." These words, spoken by a piano student at the Goodman Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina are true. This truth is a part of the reason why I began a small program for piano study at the prison two years ago. My research while a student at the Univers...

Teaching music to prison inmates is exactly 30.8 miles from my front door in suburbia to the thick metal door of the Warren Correctional Institution, home to 1,400 male inmates. On my scheduled teaching days, I arrive with my contractor badge and clear plastic bag and wait to see what the day will bring. I never know what is or is not goi...

Brenda Dillon is on the faculty of Brookhaven College in Dallas, Project Administrator for the National Piano Foundation, co-author of Acquiring Music Fundamentals, Design for Music Reading, Group Piano Study Guide, and Essential Steps and Piano Patterns, and Past Chairman of the Texas Group Piano Association...