History is spooky. Perhaps it’s the cold, stone walls and drafty passages of centuries-old architecture that give us goosebumps. Maybe it’s cracked and fading sepia-toned photographs we find hidden in attic boxes and as horror film montages, that seem artificial. Or maybe it’s that we’re tourists of the past, visiting a place we can never call home.

Eastern State Penitentiary is not a place anyone would want to call home, and the memories confined there are less than inviting. Yet, the historic prison offers peculiar charms and fascinating stories.

Chamber Music Now!’s evening productions of Cellblock is appearing at the prison as April becomes May, and plans to capture the agony, solitude, and supernaturality that is Eastern State in song. Four composers have interpreted tales of the world’s first penitentiary, transforming them into avant-garde chamber ensemble arrangements featuring clarinet, violin, cello, percussion and voice.

Quakers who ran Eastern State Penitentiary believed that total isolation from family, guards and other inmates was the only path to salvation, repentance and regret. Philip Maneval’s In My Thoughts a Fire Burned considers the religious and emotional agony that must have been felt by prisoners…

Richard Belcastro’s arrangement Ann Hinson explores historic accounts and academic research documenting one of the institution’s first female inmates, one of few inmates who did not spend her full sentence in solitary confinement.

In The Prisoner Forsaken, Richard Brodhead sets to music an original poem inspired by Charles Dickens’s visit to the Penitentiary in the 19th century, when Dickens said confinement was worse than body torture.

David Laganella’s arrangement Electronic Voice Phenomenon is inspired by Eastern State’s ghost stories, and the act of listening closely for subtle voices and echoes coming from inside the prison’s storied walls.

Now in its seventh season, Chamber Music Now! has commissioned the production with funding from The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. With an intimate 100-seat setting within the walls of Eastern State Penitentiary, Cellblock is sure to be an eerie, frightful reminder that history can weigh heavy on our hearts, when we take the time to listen.