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"Count your pencils," the guard warned the new piano instructor.
"My pencils?" the instructor wondered aloud.
"These kids will use anything as a weapon."
Paul Pollei's welcome to the Slate Canyon Youth Detention Center, Provo, could not have been better orchestrated in a Steven Spielberg film. The Brigham Young University piano professor had been invited in April to teach adolescents how to make music in their "free" time away from disciplinary schooling, psychological therapy and lockdown.
Pollei accepted, and every Saturday afternoon since has used music to melt the detainees' bravado.
"I teach life," he says. In the piano's black and white keys, Pollei insists, a person discovers confidence, accomplishment,...