An introduction by Gord Wilson –

Art is tied to reality with a thousand ties. – Hans Rookmaaker

Locked in a cave, a group of prisoners see only reflected silhouettes not things themselves. That image from Plato opens Shadow Play, a celebrated exploration of inner life. Marrying classical sensibilities with the energy of rock, Jeff Johnson sketches ten musical vignettes of searchers and dreamers whose quests and questions mirror our own.

Mrs. Gibb, from Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town, dreams of seeing Paris. Vincent Van Gogh in the Borinage, the coal mines of France, learns of his ambition to paint. Camus, the French philosopher, struggles for the meaning of existence. The "souls of all mankind' lead Ishmael, Moby Dick's famed seeker, in search of "the ungraspable phantom of life." The final vision of "Penumbrae" unveils the Celestial City, where "shadows dance around the New Jerusalem."

Lyrically brief but musically expansive, Shadow Play is a major work of power and beauty.

Johnson roams the realm of the human quest for supreme Truth, exploring the dreams and shadows that follow each of us before and after conversion. Thought and emotion are required to grasp the meanings of the songs, for each, as related to the others, is like an onion peeled to reveal yet another layer...similar to a reading of Charles Williams.

– CCM (September 1983)