A countertenor knocks your socks off, every time. Because you don’t see it coming.

The fellow is moving along in the sweet clarity of a tenor through a lovely piece of music, something about love lost and regret, let’s say. You’re feeling it. Because the singing matches the lyrics and matches the emotions. On the edge of crying, let’s say.

Suddenly the singer veers upward into a celestial aural region that you were in no way expecting – up where the emotions and sensations are usually reserved for the pure of heart. For angels and their earthly equals.