"Amazing Grade" – Part of CCA's monthly AMPLIFIED music series

“The effect is ecstatic; she sounds like the holiest of trumpets, with every note piercingly bright yet as soft as velvet. Listening to Franklin, you feel like you could ride that voice into the heavens. She’s not just a singer, she’s a human chariot” – Variety

In 1972, having topped the pop charts, Aretha Franklin returned to her family’s gospel roots, performing two concerts of deeply moving spirituals at a Baptist church in Watts, a California neighborhood still recovering from the riots. The result was the best-selling gospel album of all time … and a documentary that, for more than 40 years, sat unfinished. Footage shot by the Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack couldn’t be synced with the audio, until an enterprising producer took on the project.

Years later, "Amazing Grace" is here, and it is an ecstatic, raw, heartful celebration of African American perseverance and culture, featuring an extraordinary group of gifted musicians and an audience that will be forever altered. You will be, too.