About Musicambia

Musicambia is an educational program which brings professional musicians inside prisons to teach incarcerated people. Our Flagship Program, which began at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in 2014, meets every other Saturday from September to June. Thirty incarcerated musicians currently attend morning and afternoon classes for over 4 hours, and in doing so, foster teamwork, empathy, and a sense of responsibility to themselves as well as to their fellow students.

Today, we also operate the Jeptha Program (Mental Health Unit) and Summer Songwriting Workshop at Sing Sing. In addition, we now have programs at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, and in Kansas and California. We annually reach 125 incarcerated participants, as well as audiences of some 220 incarcerated people attending our concerts. Previously, we worked in Indiana and South Carolina: all told, Musicambia has created programs in 10 different facilities.

Musicambia's Teaching Artists are among the finest musicians and teachers in the nation. They hold positions in the Attacca Quartet and Imani Winds, and teach at Juilliard, Curtis, Princeton, and Peabody. They have won GRAMMY awards; collaborated with Pulitzer-Prize winners and Prince, and performed at Carnegie Hall. 50% are BIPOC, and their musical backgrounds span Western classical, jazz, hip-hop, and popular genres, as well as Indian classical ragas. One, Kenyatta Emmanuel, is also an Alumnus. He performed a full concert at Carnegie Hall the day he was released.

About the Songbook

The Musicambia Songbook is a print and recorded anthology of songs by our current and former incarcerated student-songwriters. The Songbook will strengthen and sustain Musicambia’s capacity to advocate for our students by inspiring support from the public at large. Together with the bilingual Musicambia Handbook—a methodology and curriculum for teaching music in incarcerated communities—the Songbook will also increase our Teaching Artists’ effectiveness and be used in staff training and community engagement activities. Spanish translation will assist individuals with LEP.

About the Cambia Collective

Testimonial

Cambia Collective at Thrive for Life