Rosemont Theatre hosted Canadian folk legend Leonard Cohen and band on October 29th, 2009. Cohen began playing at 8pm sharp and went strong for three and a half hours.
He is currently on the second leg of a tour that marks his first round of performances in the United States in over fifteen years. Such a huge amount of work and pressure might seem tough for a seventy five year old man, but if it is, Cohen doesn’t let it show. He ran lithely out onto the stage with the rest of his band as the lights dimmed to a dark red, situated himself in front of the microphone, and began right away with the 1984 hit, Dance Me to the End of Love.
Cohen’s voice has changed since he’s grown older: it’s deeper than it used to be, but it’s strangely strong and powerful for a singer of his age. Lyrics from his older songs aside, the main dark element of his music is now his booming voice. All other music on stage seems to emphasize it, not compete for control. It’s a voice of authority, one that could easily frighten, but it’s also capable of being soft and silly, and is inevitably full of emotion.
Perhaps Cohen’s most prominent backup on this tour is the Spanish guitar, played expertly by Javier Mas. Mas made his presence known in the very first song, and continued to do so with a beautiful gypsy folk influence on 12 string guitar and bandurria throughout the night. At several points Cohen took his hat off and held it up to his chest, paying apt attention to the guitar player from Barcelona.
Cohen clearly has a lot of respect for the musicians that make up his band. He introduced each member twice, at the end of both sets, and each musician was described with glowing adjectives. It was quite touching to see Cohen’s ability to remove himself from the show completely and devote all of his awareness to the other artists on stage. When he takes a break from singing and observes the other musicians, it seems as though he’s hearing them with wonder for the first time, not as though he plays with them on a nightly basis. It’s clear that Cohen is an artist who loves art for its own sake, and he is a master of blurring the distinctions between theater, poetry and music.
It’s the same lack of distinction between different types of art that contributes so greatly to Cohen’s success on stage. He has an enduring presence, and it doesn’t come from jumping up and down on stage like so many performers have do to keep an audience’s attention. He pulls you in with a bow of the head and a clenching of the fist, or by pressing his skinny knees together, as if to say the music makes him weak with beauty. Cohen’s ability to speak volumes in a gesture goes back to before his forty years of experience performing music on stage, and most likely stems from his deep connection with poetry and his experience writing and performing it. It can be hard to tell the difference between a song and a poem onstage, and in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Cohen performs his artistic vision however it comes to him, and observing him, one sometimes feels privy to something very personal and authentic.
Cohen’s three backup singers, who include co-composer Sharon Robinson, add to the show’s overall theatrical effect. They cheerily sing one song, bathed in white light, and moving with rhythm from side to side. In the next they sing hauntingly, barely moving, with their heads cocked to the side and their voices ethereally floating above them. They are all, however, featured several times throughout the course of the concert, and this is when they let their voices really shine and stand out. Every musician on stage is granted at least one or two chances to solo, and it’s obvious that Cohen surrounds himself with the brightest people he can find.
The band performed twenty plus songs, among them the crowd pleasers Bird on the Wire, I’m Your Man, Everybody Knows, and the almost painfully famous Hallelujah. Towards the beginning of the night, Cohen had said, “I don’t know when we’ll pass this way again, but I want to assure you that we intend to give you everything we’ve got.” There’s no question about it - they put their all into what turned out to be an amazing concert, and I left feeling grateful to have witnessed such passion, character and poise.
