Music can transform lives, help people deal with stress and overcome trauma. At its most basic level, it can temporarily transport a listener from the mundane circumstances of their lives to a world filled with joy and beauty.

The members of California State University, Northridge’s acclaimed Wind Ensemble hope to do just that on Saturday, Dec. 7, with a special holiday concert for the inmates at the California Institute for Woman in Corona.

“For an hour on that day,” said CSUN music professor Lawrence Stoffel, director of the Wind Ensemble, “we hope the music will transport them out of the prison walls and into a space that reminds them of their humanity.”

CSUN’s Wind Ensemble has been performing concerts at the state women’s correctional facility every year for more than a decade, with only a brief interruption during the Covid-19 pandemic, at the invitation of the prison’s chaplain.

Many of the inmates are older — in their 50s, 60s and 70s — and serving life sentences. They must earn the privilege to attend the concert, which includes classical pieces as well as holiday favorites. The audience usually consists of no more than 100 women.

For many of those in attendance, Stoffel said, the concert may be the first time they have experienced a live music performance in years.

“One forgets that prison that separates people from so much, including music,” he said. “I remember, after our first or second concert at CIW, a woman coming up to me as the audience was filing out of the auditorium and telling me that our concert was the first time in 40 years that she had heard live music. She was not including music that was part of a religious service or a class. She was talking about listening to music for the sake of music. Something we take completely for granted. But it was something she had not been able to experience for 40 years.”

Stoffel, who teaches in the CSUN’s Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication, said he includes the appearance at the correctional facility as part of the ensemble’s regular roster of performances to remind his students why they are performing musicians.

“We don’t do this so much for us,” he said. “If it was just about playing for ourselves, the students would not be studying music at a university, sacrificing so much to master their art. They want to perform and if they want to do that well, we have to understand why we are compelled to perform for others.

“The vast majority of music, of art, exists to describe and explain the human condition — our past, our present, our aspirations for the future, our successes and failures, our understanding of our purpose in the world … The list goes on,” he said. “Everyone, those who are blessed and those who are cursed, appreciate music and the other arts because of this dynamic. But those who are troubled, those who are under misfortune, I believe, have an even greater need for this.

“Those who are incarcerated, living an existence that oftentimes forces them to shed their humanity, appreciate all the more what music has to offer,” Stoffel said. “Our prison concerts are also for the guards and staff who work in the facility. They all can appreciate a  concert that brings a new worldliness, a new humanity, into a space that otherwise seems so bereft. For that hour, music serves as a bridge for their common humanity.”

Stoffel said he will never forget the first time the Wind Ensemble performed at the women’s correctional facility in 2013.

“It was a mix of both secular and religious Christmas songs,” he said. “The first third of the concert was mostly classic holiday compositions and, after each piece, there was enthusiastic applause. Then we performed ‘Silent Night.’ I had my back to audience, conducting the ensemble. I started hearing people behind me singing along quietly. It was just a few of the inmates at first, and then more and more joined in. It was a wonderful moment.”

As the ensemble continued to play holiday standards, the audience would enthusiastically sing the lyrics, from “Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer” to “Jingle Bells.”

“Then we got to ‘Good King Wenceslas,’ and no one knew the words, so they just ‘la, la, la-ed’ along,” Stoffel said, laughing.

When the concert was over, the response was overpowering, he said.

“There was the type of cheering, whooping and hollering that you would expect at a rock concert,” he said. “The immediate response from the audience, the incredible enthusiasm and appreciation for our performance, it’s hard to put into words.

“As I look back on our first couple of performances, we thought we were providing a life-changing experience for the inmates and for the staff of the prison and, certainly, that was true. We were doing just that,” Stoffel said. “But what we didn’t realize, at first, was that we were creating life-changing experiences for ourselves. We, the students and I, have been transformed by giving these concerts. We have walked away realizing that we are different musicians for having done this. We truly appreciate the power of music, of the arts, to transform lives, even when it’s just an hour.”