A summer evening recital: Lindsey Johnson, soprano

   
In the midst of each day anticipating immanent, impending loss, an evening transfigured by song, sky and cosmos.

Our evening began with a recital by Minnesota-born soprano Lindsey Johnson, in Minnetonka, MN.

From Mozart, Rossini, Chauson, Poulenc through heart-felt sacred songs and convincing Gershwin, Lindsey does not just project feeling - she conveys felt emotion - her presence is not in the presenting, the expression of lyrical song - she sings!  Each song has the voice, tone, colour, texture that is its own and not hers, the singer, but that of the song in our traditions, sustained by such performances, such memorable evenings.

I will be making a page with the recital program and notes to accompany it at aule-browser.com

We left our oldest, Sarah Beth, to visit with Lindsey, and ourselves departed the hall to a sky that was beyond any anticipation, any expectation, just had been the songs of Brahms, Strauss and Dvořák only minutes before.  We drove west to be in the open as the sky was transfigured, parallel streets of waning grey nimbus, the most distant lying on the horizon rimmed in brilliant orange.

And then a chance reminder by our lovely youngest daughter, Claire Aimée, of  the setting third-day crescent moon which Claire had seen on returning home - this reminder led  me out to the suburban street under a sky so astonishingly clear it was easy to spot M13, and, looking off the fovea in a mere 8" SCT, I beheld the great cluster as never before - not salt glinting on black velvet, there is no simile for what cannot be seen for looking.  And then a mere stroll out of Hercules into the Lyre and the great ring nebula with shades of grey hinting at its known colours and structure and then to the double-double stars above that exquisite constellation. And all this as Mars and Saturn sank in the west embedded in Leo, while Pegasus rose in the east with Cassiopeia now clear of the rooftops and returned from her spring eclipse beneath the northern horizon of the early night sky.  Summer has returned.  And all that is in the offing, is only just that, and is not all that yet could be, may be, will be.