Telling our story through song

Singer celebrates Lafayette Bicentennial with musical memories

Audrey Johnson’s soaring, emotion-filled mezzo soprano causes eyes to mist up, as happened to a room full of people attending a program on the Underground Railroad in Lafayette when they joined her in “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Her voice brings joy to the soul as it did when she performed “God Bless America” with the Lafayette Citizens Band at its Memorial Day concert in Columbian Park.

A classically trained opera singer with a master’s degree from the University of Houston’s award-winning opera program, Johnson marches to a different drummer.

Instead of pursuing a glittery stage career performing Verdi, Puccini or Mozart in foreign languages, she chooses a more intimate stage where she can perform American heritage tunes in English.

She’s particularly busy this Bicentennial year performing before clubs, school groups, at concerts, festivals and community events in Greater Lafayette and beyond.

As a student pursuing a career in opera, “the pinnacle is ‘the Met or bust,’ or some equivalent,” Johnson says. “I drank that Kool-Aid for a long time.”

While doing outreach performances as part of her artist’s residency with the Shreveport (Louisiana) Opera, however, she experienced an “aha moment” in a decidedly non-grand opera — “The Ugly Duckling” — that ultimately led to a change in her career path.

Johnson says it was what she saw in the eyes and faces and reactions of the young audience that opened her eyes to performing in a different, more intimate way. But it didn’t all come together until she spent time singing opera professionally in Austria and Germany. As much as she enjoyed those opportunities, she became unexpectedly homesick.

“I really did find this completely newfound appreciation for American culture,” Johnson says. “It took a physical ocean between me and the United States to become aware of that.”

She found herself tinkering with the idea of smaller shows that were more personal. Heartfelt American history instead of grand European themes. Lessons in leadership and moral character. “If you can learn morals from a duck or billy goat or a pig, how about from Frederick Douglass, from Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, from actual Americans that have lived?” she says.

“I felt like I was called to do something with everything that I had been taught, and how I had been trained, but it wasn’t necessarily going to look like the career path I had envisioned.”

She worried that “I didn’t have what it takes. But of course, I did. I had been in this field forever. But still it was scary.”

Being scared, she found out, motivates her. Dipping her toe into genealogy waters, she discovered that her great, great, great, great grandfather was a Minute Man at Lexington, and that seemed like a sign she was on the right track. Lafayette entered the picture because her husband (at the time) was finishing degree work at Purdue University. Johnson felt this town could be home, finding it to be “really astounding. I really wonder if people that have lived here their whole lives know what a unique community they have here.”

In 2018 she started to develop one-woman theatrical shows under the banner of “American Heritage Through Song,” a combination of spoken history, photography and vintage songs cleverly focused on music as an instrument of social change.

“It’s my mission to be an ambassador for this music. That’s why I sing,” she says.

“And if I was going to ask them (audiences) to trust me, to go on this journey where we reflect on who we are as people, then I needed to have fun. I needed to provide an atmosphere where we could really do that.”

The story in each program not only features historical music but projections of historical images and song lyrics. Each encourages audience interaction.

Costumes and wigs were also necessary to create precisely the right era. Some period outfits she had made especially for her. Others were pieced together from finds at a going out of business sale at Midwest Rentals.

Among the programs that evolved:

• “We’ve Come a Long Way, Ladies,” a musical celebration of the 19th Amendment, was her first program. During Covid she video recorded it and marketed it that way.

• “A More Perfect Union” high lights the colonists’ transformation from loyal Britons to American patriots.

• “The Setting for Our Dreams,” is a musical celebration of early Lafayette history.

• “First Lady of the Air,” explores Amelia Earhart’s heroism, again through song.

• “Christmas in the Heartland,” blends religious and revolutionary sentiments during early American history.

Working with the Lifelong Arts Institute of the Indiana Arts Commission, she developed a special program for older adults called “Lest We Forget: Voices of American Women Yesterday and Today.” It takes her into a senior living facility such as Westminster Village a week before the performance where she teaches the songs to interested seniors.

“They (the seniors) co-lead the audience with me and they also write an original song using the melody from ‘My Country ’Tis of Thee’,” Johnson says. Typically, “they write about their experiences with women’s rights that younger generations may not have experienced so it bridges generations.”

The open arms the Greater Lafayette community and the Midwest have offered to her programs have impacted her. “People don’t know me, but they are supporting me. It’s amazing, I mean it really is,” she says.

“I just really feel honored. When something’s in your heart and you let it out into the world and somebody else grabs ahold of your hand and says ‘Let’s go,’ it’s special.” ★

If you want to hear vocal snippets from Audrey Johnson’s programs visit: oftheeising.com

July 11-12 Sydney Pollack Film Festival Long Center

July 11-Aug. 1 TAF Exhibit | Grand and Gone: Lost Buildings of Lafayette Michelle Wood-Voglund

July 12 Wabash Riverfest Tapawingo Park | 9 am-4 pm

July 18 Blues Legend Buddy Guy Loeb Stadium | Tickets longpac.org

Aug. 2 Lafayette’s Past and Future | Civic Theatre Youth Performance | Jeff HS

Aug. 15 TCHA Taste of the Past Dinner | 6 p.m.

Aug. 21-Dec. 28 Haan Museum | Hoosier Heritage on Canvas: Indiana Farms & Gardens

Sept. 6 General Marquis de Lafayette’s Birthday

Walk & Talk Tour | 11 am Historic South Street Tour Visit Lafayette200.com

TCHA Bicentennial Book Launch Visit Lafayette200.com

Sept. 9 Author, Selene Castrovilla, Visit Revolutionary Friends: General George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette | TCPL Holman | 6:30 pm