Kevin Kohler, a former inmate at Allen-Oakwood Correctional Institution, will hear the Lima Symphony Orchestra perform his “Halls of Justice” on Sunday.
Music brought Kevin Kohler rehabilitation while he served an 18-year prison term.
On Sunday, music brings him back into Allen-Oakwood Correctional Institution as an honored guest.
Kohler will be on hand Sunday when the Lima Symphony Orchestra performs at the prison in what organizers believe is the first-ever full symphony performance inside an Ohio prison and possibly a first in the nation’s history. He’ll listen as the symphony performs his original composition, “Halls of Justice.”
“Music played a huge role in my rehabilitation while serving my sentence,” Kohler said in an interview via email. “I never imagined that God would open doors in a place like a prison for me to give back and serve with the gift of music that God blessed me with.”
Kohler, a former high school band director and teacher, was 38 at the time he was “incarcerated because of poor choices” he made and sentenced to prison in 2003. The prisons released him on parole in 2021.
In between those dates, he gave his life to God and found a way to use his musical background to help others in prison. He served as music ministry director at Ross Correctional Institution in Chillicothe, music/choir director at London Correctional Institution in London and finally as music ministry director at Allen-Oakwood in Lima.
“Over the years, doors opened for me to teach and lead music ministry and music classes at each of the institutions that I was at during my 18 years of incarceration,” said Kohler, who is now 59. “I discovered that there are a lot of good and talented individuals (musicians) within the prison system. Yes, we all made some horrible choices that led us to prison, but in the end, we are all still human beings, and most are sincere about changing their lives whether returning to society or making a difference within the prison system. It is all about offering hope.”
Hope was an inspiration in writing “Halls of Justice” in 2012. He composed it to commemorate the sentencing reform work in the 129th Ohio General Assembly and to thank those “who give others a second chance in life,” he said.
“Many of us have fallen short in one way or another and have had some experience in our lives where we thought we were finished,” he said. “It is just at that point that someone who we possibly would never have expected gives us another opportunity to get it right, change our lives and learn from our past mistakes and failures.”
Kohler, who earned his bachelor’s degree in music education from Bowling Green State University in 1992, hadn’t ever written music for a band and orchestra before, beyond some assignments for college composition classes. While serving time in London, his prison received an old version of a notation software program, “Finale,” that Stanton’s Sheet Music in Columbus donated to the chapel.
The computer program allowed him to write and arrange music for chapel music teams. He found a way to take two of his favorite styles, marches and hymns, and connect them in “Halls of Justice,” which begins in a march style before eventually bringing in the familiar hymn, “Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior.”
Listen to a computer-generated performance of ‘Halls of Justice’
In 2018, after a move to Lima’s prison, he heard a television interview with Elizabeth Brown-Ellis, the executive director of the Lima Symphony Orchestra, about its plans to bring the music to people who were unable to come out to Veterans Memorial Civic Center to experience it. He told Lima’s chaplain, Paul Engle, about it. Before long, smaller ensembles began performing at the prison.
In 2020, Kohler shared his composition with some of those performers, and the entire symphony orchestra planned to perform it July 2, 2020. The COVID pandemic ended those dreams — until now. Through the symphony’s “Healing Through Music” program, the music will ring out at the prison, including patriotic songs and even the prison’s 100-member men’s choir singing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
“The Lima community is so fortunate to have such a gem of an orchestra as the Lima Symphony here in northwest Ohio,” Kohler said. “I am also blessed to be able to go back into the institution, ironically three years to the day after I was released, to experience the premiere performance of the piece. Several of the incarcerated individuals who are still there were great sources of help and encouragement to me personally while I was at Allen Correctional, and this performance is as much for them as it is for me.”
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David Trinko is editor of The Lima News. Reach him at 567-242-0467, by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @Lima_Trinko.
