El jazz suena en el corredor de la muerte

Albert Marquès shows us the reality of the American prison system through the story of Keith Lamar, an African American on death row. Throughout more than thirty years isolated in a tiny death row cell in an Ohio prison, Keith LaMar has managed to stay sane by listening to jazz and trying to understand why American justice chose him. Accused without material evidence and after prosecutors withheld exonerating testimony, an all-white court sentenced him to death for five murders that occurred during a prison riot in Lucasville in 1993. Since then, he has fought to prove that He is innocent and remembers that he is a human being. In the middle of the covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, Albert Marquès, a jazz pianist from Granollers living in New York, learned his story and, after months of friendship and collaboration, they created the album Freedom first together, which has followed a series of concerts in America and Europe in which LaMar himself intervenes by telephone reciting his writings. Based on the LaMar case, Jazz on Death Row examines the racism inherent in American justice, the multi-billion dollar business of prison privatization, and the struggle to remain mentally healthy within a prison system designed for punishment. But, above all, this book talks about holding on to truth and life in extreme conditions, about the power of jazz to unite human beings, and about the power of music to overcome adversity.