Changing Their Tune

They paced back and forth, buttoned and unbuttoned their collars, chatted in tight voices.

It was a tense time for these kids who had been swept up in the madness of gangs and drugs before they were old enough to get driving permits.

Most of them had been convicted of murder. They had traveled through the judicial system with the defiant slouch of the perennially accused, had tumbled through a series of “facilities” and “institutions” and wound up doing their time with all the other tough young offenders at the California Youth Authority’s Ventura School.

But the others wouldn’t have to sit under the auditorium lights in just a few minutes and play a piano piece by Chopin or Debussy. They wouldn’t have to endure the stomach-churning risk of screwing up again as their parents and everyone in the school watched, of realizing that success--in anything--might always be just beyond their reach.

Just as passionately, none of the nine young pianists wanted to disappoint their teacher, Wayne Allen. At 65, Allen was just two weeks from retiring. He had taught piano to 500 students over his 20 years at the Ventura School but had never mounted an effort as big as this concert. There would be no second chances.

A few minutes before the performance, the tuxedo-clad performers assembled for a group portrait beside the gleaming grand piano. Their arms folded and their jaws set, they looked as intensely serious as turn-of-the-century Ivy Leaguers posing in the parlor of their private club.

“My boys,” Allen calls them. “My criminals.”

He was confident they knew their pieces but, as an accomplished concert pianist, he also knew about the emotional strain of performing in public. He told them to brace for catcalls from the audience, to focus on the music and, at the end, to stand tall and bow, no matter what.

Allen, who holds a doctorate in pedagogy and performance from the Conservatory of Rome, knows how to score points with kids fresh from the street.

“I verbally abuse them,” he said, joking. “I tell them what sponges they are. I say, ‘You get that phrase wrong again, I’ll break your fingers!’ ”

In a world where strangers can be shot to death for wearing a red baseball cap in a blue-cap neighborhood, Allen might not last long. But in his classroom, he calls the tune.

“I let them know that nobody goes off in my class,” he said. “It just isn’t done.”

His students speak of him respectfully, quietly relishing the “doctor” part of his name, as in, “Dr. Allen, he goes with the flow,” or “I told Dr. Allen I didn’t think I could do the Bach, but Dr. Allen said he knew I could do it, without a doubt . . . “

Over the years, the wards, as the CYA inmates are called, have gotten back to him after their release: “Dr. Allen, I’ve got a good job now.” “Dr. Allen, I’ve got a family.” “Dr. Allen, I’m making my kid take piano.”

“He’s changed the lives of so many people,” said Kathleen Gransee, one of the school’s administrators. “These guys are transformed when they sit down at the piano bench.”

Nothing in Allen’s life prepared him to wield such influence. After studying music in Italy, he roamed Europe as an accompanist and solo performer. He worked as a studio musician and composer before returning to his hometown of Santa Paula to help his ailing parents.

At the Ventura School, he found kids who had never tried their hand at “Chopsticks” or heard a single measure of classical music.

“I play it for them,” he said, “and if someone says he wants to learn Beethoven’s ‘Pathetique,’ who am I to say no? Our kids lead pretty easy lives here, but most want a challenge and they don’t get it anyplace else.”

They were getting one now.

At Allen’s urging, administrators had borrowed a grand piano and arranged a post-recital reception. Previous recitals had been low-key affairs in a visitors lounge, minus decorative pots of morning glory and the transformative power of borrowed tuxedos.

“These are my guys,” Allen told administrators. “Let’s do it right.”

One by one, the guys came out, bowed, sat straight as Marines at attention and poured themselves into Debussy, Schubert, Beethoven.

*

Later, Michael Muro said that as he played the soothing “Song of India,” he was thinking of his mother, dying in a cancer ward.

“I played for her,” he said. “We never got along that great, but I wanted to dedicate this to her.”

Flanked by guards, row after row of wards in white T-shirts and jeans hooted encouragement to each player but quieted as they sat down to play. When Calvin Mabson nailed the wildly cascading chords in Rachmaninoff’s Prelude No. 2 in C-sharp minor, they erupted in applause.

In front, a few parents took photos and brushed away tears.

From time to time, a walkie-talkie crackled, piercing the mood. The boys played on through the police radios, not forgetting where they were but reminded of who they could be. They made occasional mistakes and played through them; at the end, each stood tall and bowed.

Allen said he knew they could do it.

However, he was stunned when his boys gave him a plaque.

It said: “You have inspired us to achieve beyond our greatest expectations and you have opened doors to a new world which will be a part of us forever. Thank you for everything . . . “

Back home in Santa Paula, he kept reading it, poring over the inscription like a favorite score.

“I cried most of the night,” he said.

Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.