An Evening with Thomas Quasthoff

Linz, July 15 2016.
Thomas Quasthoff is singing My funny Valentine.
Silence is like an envelope around this brilliant piece of music, of performance.
It was Quasthoff's first show in Linz after many years.
It was my return to Linz, too.
Not far from places where I used to walk my dog, not far from places where I saw and feared the Bauernbergpark Man, not far from my old bedroom window, we met.
The famous and the unknown.
The watcher and the watched.
The singer and the listener.
The star and the fan.
In a closely packed and seated crowd I listened to Georgia, to I Got You Under my Skin and to My Way. Jocelyn B. Smith was brilliant, too. But I was there for the man.
The band and the piano player were excellent. But I was there to see Quasthoff.
I saw him for the third time, after an evening in the Musikverein and after his Amfortas performance in Wagners Parsifal. 
I have no words for this man.
For me he is an extraterrestrial and the most human of all human beings at the same time.
He is one of my ultimate super heroes.
Still, in spite of all this lack of symmetry in our relation between star and fan, I'd like to be his next door neighbor, have a drink with him occasionally, talk about the world with him.
The show is over...
No.
Mr. Quasthoff and band come back to the stage, make a joke about the FPÖ and perform New York, New York.
It was an evening for Frank Sinatra.
Wherever Franky Boy was hanging around, he would surely be proud of himself and proud that he has given life to such a legacy.
I was part of it somehow. Passively. It was GREAT.