A Simple Quartet....

Before Barack Obama stepped up to take his oath above the crowd of chilled but cheerful well-wishers stretching all the way back to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, there was another moment for music. Simple music, played by four musicians representing the diversity and accomplishment of American culture: an Israeli-American, another born of Chinese parents, an African-American raised on the south side of Chicago and a recent transplant from Venezuela. These representatives of Obama's vision of a culture blind to color and creed joined together for an arrangement of one of America's most abiding tunes: the Shaker melody "Simple Gifts." The lyric, written in 1848 by an Elder in the Shaker Community in Alfred, Maine, begins: " 'Tis a gift to be simple / 'Tis a gift to be free."

Yo-Yo Ma's cello, Itzhak Perlman's violin, Anthony McGill's clarinet and Gabriela Montero's piano each held the melody and then layered it, twisting and curling out over the suddenly calming crowd. A man behind us remarked that a flock of birds seemed to be soaring along with the music. For a moment, everyone looked up.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99796514&ft=1&f=1039