ROCKPORT — Down East Singers will present a showing of the PBS documentary Rediscovering Rachmaninoff Thursday, Nov. 14, at 6:30 p.m., at Pascal Hall, 86 Pascal Avenue, Rockport. The program will be repeated Friday, Nov. 22, at 6:30 p.m., at Watts Hall, 174 Main Street, Thomaston. A suggested donation of $20 is requested.

The artistic director of Down East Singers, Anthony Antolini, will hold an informal discussion with the audience following the showing of the documentary, which he filmed in 1988 on location in the USSR. Members of Down East Singers will perform selected movements of the work as a preview of their December concerts.

Rediscovering Rachmaninoff is the story of the creation, disappearance and rediscovery of a sacred masterpiece. It's the story of a dedicated choral director who painstakingly recreated Sergei Rachmaninoff's "Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom," and the volunteer chorus that journeyed from California to the Soviet Union to perform the long-suppressed liturgy to overflow crowds.

"It is, more than anything, the story of the celebrated composer Sergei Rachmaninoff's Liturgy, his first major choral composition, of which he wrote, 'Not for a long time…have I written anything with such pleasure,'" said Antolini,  in a news release.

Inspired by the magnificent music sung in the Russian Orthodox Church, Rachmaninoff completed the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in July 1910. It fell into obscurity after he fled Russia in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

For further information please visit downeastsingers.org or call 207.619.0413.