For 45 years, Kronos Quartet has transformed musical experiences and expectations with innovation and creativity. A Thousand Thoughts follows that course, enveloping audiences in a documentary about the string quartet’s role in the musical landscape, presented with live narration by filmmaker Sam Green. Kronos Quartet has changed the way the world views the grouping of violins, viola and cello, taking on endless musical genres and hurdling over perceived boundaries. The documentary includes interviews with luminaries such as Philip Glass, Tanya Tagaq, Steve Reich, Wu Man and Terry Riley, though the quartet itself gains central focus with their accompanying live performance of music from their vast repertoire.

In a true picture of the sum being greater than its parts, violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt and cellist Sunny Yang offer a singularly focused, transformative musical experience. As Kronos Quartet, they continue pushing boundaries and redefining the idea of what a classical string quartet is “supposed” to be.

Over the years, Kronos Quartet has been celebrated as one most influential groups of our times, releasing more than 60 recordings with extraordinary breadth, collaborating with the world’s leading composers and performers, and commissioning close to 1,000 works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos also has received more than 40 awards, including both the Polar Music and Avery Fisher Prize, a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance and the “Musicians of the Year” honor from Musical America.

Green, no stranger to the live documentary format, created The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller with a live score by the band Yo La Tengo in 2012, followed by The Measure of All Things, featuring the band yMusic, premiering in 2014. With A Thousand Thoughts, however, music and story meld in an exceptionally cohesive way.

When Green first approached Kronos Quartet with the concept, members of the group didn’t quite understand, Green said in an online Q&A with Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, which helped commission the project. “But they said, ‘Sure, that sounds fun.’ It’s one of the things I love about them. They’ve been doing it for 40-plus years and they’re still experimental, take chances, do weird stuff, you know? Which is a delight, I think.”

“It’s as magical an amalgamation as anything you can imagine.” – LA Times

“…the most joyous experience you could have at Sundance this year” – Sam Adams, Slate Magazine