Simple Gifts: The Chamber Music Society at Shaker Village (2016)

Each year on Memorial Day Weekend, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center takes up residency in one of the country's most beautiful historical sites: Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill in rural Kentucky, where a vibrant Shaker community once flourished. In 2015, performing for an appreciative audience in a converted tobacco barn, the Chamber Music Society celebrated American music with performances of unparalleled intimacy and intensity, climaxing with Aaron Copland's monumental "Appalachian Spring," whose melody incorporates a traditional Shaker theme. Director Habib Azar and documentarian Elliot Caplan went on the road with CMS into the heart of rural America, creating a film that uniquely blends musical performance with historical resonance, drawing poignant parallels between the gift of making music, the beauty and hardships of the frontier, and the quest for transcendence in American life.

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