Unique volunteer group injects music at tense scenes of fatal shootings and protests

​By Margo Kirchner

It’s late on a Friday evening in June and four string musicians wait at the ready for something they do not want to happen: a fatal shooting in Milwaukee.

They sit on call at Central Methodist Church, prepared to leave for the scene of a shooting to play classical chamber music to comfort and heal the community. 

Founder, music director, and violist Dayvin Hallmon frequently checks his laptop for the list of 911 calls, looking for reports of a shooting or shots fired. 

The other musicians talk and check their phones. One plays the piano for an hour. A stack of board games is available, though not used that night. Hallmon takes a few moments to shout at three people headed behind the shed off the church’s parking lot, telling them they are trespassing and need to leave. 

Violinist Churchill Caruthers has played with the ensemble since it began in 2019. Cellist Autumn Maria Reed is a composer of instrumental music in multiple genres and also plays string bass. Violinist Fatima Gomez arrived last that evening, coming from a mariachi gig. 

The musicians are members of the Black String Triage Ensemble. Throughout the summer, the ensemble of volunteers designates certain weekend evenings to be on call to respond to shootings in Milwaukee. On-call time can last five or six hours, to midnight or beyond.

Hallmon says the ensemble is the first and only one of its kind in the world. No other city has this. 

The group’s mission is to use music, especially music by Black and Latin composers and artists, to address pain, foster healing, promote love, call for justice, and guard against hopelessness.

For now, the ensemble focuses on playing at scenes of fatal shootings and various rallies or protests, the latter for peacekeeping purposes. They’ve played at scenes of drug overdoses and car crashes, too.

In response to fatal shootings, “to speak to the life circumstances that give rise to such a horrifying event, a concert at the scene is necessary to dissipate and repel those negative forces. By being present among the people and playing music at a time when it is needed the most, we can transform the public space into a place of recovery, healing and hope for the community,” reads the group’s website.

“We don’t have to live destroyed and broken,” Hallmon told Wisconsin Justice Initiative in an interview. “If there isn’t a cultural mind shift, this (violence) is going to continue,” he said. 

“What’s amazing to me is how everybody is burdened” by shootings—it’s not just the person shot and the person pulling the trigger, he said. Sometimes “the circumstances are so outrageous that there can be no justification for it, and law enforcement has to reckon with that. It destroys everybody,” he said.

Autumn Maria Reed, Churchill Caruthers, Fatima Gomez, and Dayvin Hallmon (L to R) on call in June. Photograph by Margo Kirchner.

Hallmon checking the 911 calls. Photograph by Margo Kirchner.

For peacekeeping, the intent is to inject music into a tense space to deter violence. Maybe if violence holds off, we can have a moment of reconciliation, Hallmon said.

The night in June thankfully passed without the need for a concert. The quartet piled into two cars (a cello and music stands take up a bit of space) around midnight to drive to the location of a possible shooting, but they found no police presence there. 

The musicians act as a team, driving to a scene together from their on-call site. When asked what the Black String Triage Ensemble needs most, Hallmon immediately responded with “a van,” big enough to transport cellos, basses, and people. Many of the group’s musicians, including Hallmon, do not own or have access to a car. He could have a quartet or quintet on call, but no one there with a vehicle to get them to the scene of a shooting.

The ensemble planned to play peacekeeping concerts during the Republican National Convention, but they pivoted that Tuesday night, July 16, to instead play a concert at King Park, where Columbus, Ohio, police shot and killed Samuel Sharpe Jr., an unhoused man, earlier in the day.

That evening, eight musicians and a clergy member gathered at Village Church MKE in downtown Milwaukee and drove to King Park just after a memorial gathering ended. Violist Miguel Barrenechea; violinists Jane Han and Christopher Washington; cellist John Hodges; and chaplain Tom Gaulke joined Hallmon, Caruthers, Reed, and Gomez.

A group of people still stood at the corner of W. Vliet and N. 14th streets, with vigil candles burning. Gomez emphasized that the ensemble should play for those remaining even if others had already left.

The musicians set their music stands on the sidewalk and tuned their instruments in the dark while Gaulke talked with people in the park and on the street. He explained what the musicians were doing and answered questions, some posed by media members with lanyards showing RNC credentials. 

Hallman told WJI that it is very helpful to have a clergy member with them to talk with the crowd, as musicians need to focus on playing.

The need for flexibility and on-site adjustments is clear. The musicians do not know the conditions at a scene when they arrive. Hallmon said “anything can go down. Just because law enforcement has secured the scene doesn’t necessarily mean the drama’s done. It’s still active and live.” 

The group needs to find the right location for playing—a place where they can be heard but not be in the way, Hallmon said. He wants the ensemble to be present without taking up space. “The music should take up the space, not you,” he said.

Timing is important. The ensemble has arrived at a scene too early, even before the medical examiner. They found people too angry then, Hallmon said. Yet several hours after a shooting is likely too late.

But “there’s a point when you can be there just kind of after folks have figured out what’s happened and are wrestling to find that spot of comfort, and speak in that moment,” Hallmon said.

The group usually does not play right away, instead getting a feel for the particular scene and the people there.

They play a selection of classical music, jazz, soul, spirituals, blues, and tango. The music is organized into two programs based on five stages of grief, plus a sixth stage of faith. The team talks about what music should be played at the scene.

“As a crew of musicians, we feel the moment together,” Hallmon said. “It’s all of those little calculations.”

The ensemble does not coordinate with law enforcement. They do not ask for permission to play.

People at a scene sometimes have initially objected, but then have told the group that the music was a blessing and what they needed. There’s this thing about people being ready to hear,” Hallmon said.

As the octet played at King Park on July 16, several individuals prayed around lit candles along the side of the street. A helicopter circled overhead several times. A man walking by remarked that he had not seen string instruments since high school or junior high.

Black String Triage Ensemble at the scene of the King Park shooting fatality, July 16, 2024. Photographs and video by Margo Kirchner.

​The idea of the Black String Triage Ensemble came to Hallmon while he was a Kenosha County Board supervisor walking around his district. Hallmon was elected to the Kenosha County Board at age 23 in 2008 and reelected several times, serving for 10 years. He represented District 7, Uptown Kenosha. 

Someone asked him what would happen “if a bunch of string players showed up after a crime scene and didn’t play Mozart” or “Orange Blossom Special,” he said.

Hallmon ran for state office in 2012 but was unsuccessful. He moved to Milwaukee in 2018 and started Black String Triage Ensemble the next year.

The ensemble is now part of a nonprofit, which includes the Black Diaspora Symphony Orchestra, a larger group of classical musicians of color joined by non-Black, non-Latinx musician colleagues (the latter group known as the Legion of the Soul). 

The orchestra’s repertoire emphasizes the work of Black and Latinx composers and focuses on the life experiences of people of color. The orchestra does not neglect standard repertoire, but “it’s just not the meat on the plate,” Hallmon said. “There’s enough stuff in symphonic music to tell everybody’s story.”

Hallmon told WJI that before the Juneteenth concert he eagerly handed Milwaukee police officers his business card and invited them to come hear Joel Thompson’s “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed,” about the last words of seven Black men before they were shot by police. Other pieces at this year’s Juneteenth concert included Florence B. Price’s “Ethiopia’s Shadow in America,” Williams Grant Still’s “And They Lynched Him on a Tree,” and Black String Triage Ensemble musician Reed’s “Cries from OUR Soil.” (The multi-talented Reed’s composition “Brazilians” was performed by Brazil’s Orchestra Sinfonia Nacional in 2023, and her “Robin’s Eye View” was played by the Chicago Philharmonic this summer.) 

Each year the orchestra plays a memorial concert for missing and departed children. Other concerts have included issues of lynching and the victims of Jeffrey Dahmer.

Hallmon has worked with teenagers at Riverside High School and children in programs at Milwaukee Public Schools and around the city. Elementary-age children have told him that they call their city “Killwaukee.”

Hallmon believes policy reforms will not succeed in counteracting violence and recklessness. For instance, installing new traffic control barriers and curbs will not change the behavior of mischievous teenagers—it just gives them more to hit, Hallmon said. “There’s no policy in government or law to counteract” young boys stealing cars to impress girls.

He sees potential in culturally relevant, trauma informed music and arts, though. Living in the inner city can create post-traumatic stress disorder, he said, and creative writing and music have worked to help veterans recover from the traumas of war. “Why can’t we apply that to the urban population?” he asked.

He understands the benefits of sports, but sees a significant problem when kids in first grade say they want to be doctors or teachers but by third grade say they want to be in the NFL. 

Instead, being physically responsible for creating a sound, such as by placing a finger on a string and moving a bow, can “rewire your brain,” Hallmon said. Creating music can change not only the person listening, but also the musician, he said.

In addition, he believes that five minutes of mindfulness via classical music played over the public address system in school each day could reduce behavioral issues. He thinks the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra should partner with Milwaukee Public Schools and provide snippets of its recording catalog to make that happen. “Print this because it’s true,” he said. “Get it done.”

Meanwhile, the ensemble and orchestra will continue to gather and to wait, hoping they will not be needed. When they are, they want their music to help move others toward healing, comfort, and conversations about violence and racism in Milwaukee.

PBS created a short documentary about the Black String Triage Ensemble, available on the homepage of the group's website here.