Saint Leonard in Seattle! Was I there? Oh HELL yes!

Leonard Cohen has been my number one musical and lyrical hero from the moment Martha first introduced me to him in her warm, blue attic room in the winter of '92. That makes me a latecomer to the majesty of Cohen but believe me I made up for lost time. I have in my collection many of Leonard Cohen's earliest songs....the songs that, unfortunately have never been re-recorded, even though they are worthy. The Traitor, for instance. One of the greatest of LC's early works. Did you think for one second that I would miss a once in a lifetime chance to see him live in Seattle? Not a chance.
His delivery was flawless (well...it was flawed which only made it more flawless), as summed up in the following review, but what they don't mention is the absolute classiness that Leonard Cohen embodies. He introduced his excellent band and back-up singers twice during the concert and doffed his hat and bowed to each of them in respect. Also, in a show he could have completely dominated, he gracefully stepped aside several times to give the brilliant talent of his back-up a chance to shine through with solos by Sharon Robinson (pictured at left) with her stellar delivery of
Boogie Street and by the excellent (and flexible) Webb Sisters, Hattie and Charley Webb (pictured at right) and others.

Javier Mas of Barcelona played the bandurria and several other exotic stringed instruments. Bassist Roscoe Beck and guitarist Bob Metzger are long-time Cohen accompanists.

I had to skip out on classes in order to make it to downtown Seattle in time for the show but as the inimitable Anna Rourke advised me: "Without a doubt, go to the Leonard Cohen!!! On your deathbed, are you going to look back and think about how you loved Biology or you loved the Leonard Cohen show?" Wise advice.
It was well worth it. The show was great. As a note of warning to music lovers: The Wamu theater bites the big one. I will never see another show there...unless it is one of my musical heroes like Leonard Cohen and that is the only place he is playing...to a sold out crowd I might add.




The reception Cohen received when he bounded (yes, bounded) onstage almost immediately brought me to tears. The entire audience was instantly on its feet, welcoming the 74-year-old legend with a degree of affection few artists could even imagine experiencing. Looking impressively fit and fiercely dapper in a precisely tailored black suit, charcoal shirt, and sharp fedora, he launched immediately into "Dance Me to the End of Love." With ample assistance from what appeared to be the most gracefully accomplished collection of backing musicians on the planet, Cohen delivered a masterful, three-and-a-half hour set (with one brief intermission) that encompassed all the highlights of his mammoth catalog, including "Bird on the Wire," "Everybody Knows," "Who by Fire," "Chelsea Hotel No. 2," "Suzanne," "Hallelujah," and "I'm Your Man." Unsurprisingly, he was a consummate and gracious showman, poetically introducing his band (describing one guitarist, Bob Metzger, as "the architect of the arpeggio") like a proud father and offering up song banter so artful, I was certain I could just listen to an entire set of his spiritual musings. "I once turned to a rigorous study of philosophy and religion, but cheerfulness kept breaking through," he said during the break after "Waiting for a Miracle." It would be impossible to single out a highlight, but watching him wind his way through an epic encore set that included "So Long, Marianne," "First We Take Manhattan," and "Famous Blue Raincoat" while retaining enough chutzpah to dance off the stage in exactly the same manner he'd arrived was unforgettably heartwarming.

Finally, it's worth noting that I've never been a huge fan (or much of a detractor) of WaMu Theater, but my indifference made an abrupt 180 that night. The sound was mixed meticulously, with every wisp of clarinet and flutter of harp placed precisely, while Cohen's vocals were right where they were supposed to be—magically enveloping the entire room and yet sounding like he was whispering into your ear. Granted, the regal aesthetic of the Paramount might have seemed like a more fitting choice for such an iconic treasure, but my hat's off to the team behind Cohen for such a flawlessly engineered production.

Concert review |
Troubadour Leonard Cohen delivers masterful WaMu show

Singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen performed a masterful sold-out show in Seattle April 23 at WaMu Theater, demonstrating that the 74-year-old troubadour is the best interpreter of his own canon; review by Misha Berson.

By Misha Berson

He has not performed in Seattle in about 15 years, Leonard Cohen told his sold-out WaMu Theater crowd on Thursday. The last time was back when he was only 60, he cracked, and "just a crazy kid with a dream."

Cohen fans could not have dreamed of a more fulfilling, transporting return by the esteemed Canadian troubadour. With a luxuriant band and three backup singers, all of whom have accompanied him on his current world "comeback" tour, Cohen graciously welcomed the crowd into his "tower of song." And like a poet-shaman of old, he put us under a seamless, timeless musical trance that lasted more than three hours.

Now a spry 74, Cohen literally skipped onto the WaMu stage, to the strains of his rapturous love song, "Dance Me to the End of Love." Looking gangster-of-love sharp in his trademark black suit and rakish fedora (his band sported the same look), Cohen swirled us through the riches of his songbook — from the witty doomsday scenarios ("The Future"), to the love ballads of heartbroken jubilations ("Ain't No Cure for Love"), to the incisive anthems ("Democracy") and haunting incantations ("Hallelujah").

Cushioning his "thousand kisses deep" voice (still a surprisingly sturdy basso rasp) were the musicians saluted repeatedly by the Buddhist-Jewish singer with warm praise, and reverential bows from the waist.

The band earned his love, with lush instrumental arrangements that brought out the Mediterranean/Middle Eastern flavor of Cohen's minor-key melodies. The work of Javier Mas, a Spanish virtuoso of such string instruments as the bandurria, and the snake-charming horn solos of Dino Soldo on a variety of horns, were especially savory. And the celestial harmonies of British sisters Charley and Hattie Webb, and vocal interplay of Sharon Robinson (co-composer of "Everybody Knows" and other Cohen odes), were integral to the mix.

But the songs of human failing and transcendence Cohen has wrought over a lifetime could soar even without such fine embellishment. Marbled with biblical allusions and existential ironies, prayers and omens, apocalypse and celebration, sexual politics and political metaphysics, they are novellas and elegies and sermons on the mount.

And they're saved from pretentiousness by wit, and self-mockery, and sheer genius.

The complexity and erudition of Cohen's songs make most pop-music lyrics seem like nursery rhymes. "The dealer wants you thinkin' it's either black or white," he intoned. "Thank God it's not that simple, in my secret life."

Arguably, save Bob Dylan, no other pop bard has stockpiled three hours of material as profound, eloquent and enigmatic as what Cohen and company performed. But while he rose to fame in the 1960s alongside Dylan and others, the Montreal native was not shaped so much by folk Americana as by Beat poetics and the chansons of such French balladeer as Jacques Brel.

It was folkie diva Judy Collins who first popularized Cohen's songs ("Suzanne," "Famous Blue Raincoat") in the U.S. And when Cohen's debut album appeared in 1967, many listeners preferred Collins' prettier treatments of his tunes to his own craggy-voiced, string-drenched renditions.

But at WaMu, there was no doubt that the songwriter is now recognized as the definitive interpreter of his own canon. For eloquence and intimacy, his expressive voice-of-God delivery of such standards as "Bird on the Wire" could hardly be bested.

"Ring the bells, that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering," he sang. But on this concert tour, perhaps but hopefully not his last, Cohen's offering was as close to perfection as one dares to imagine.



...Like a bird on a wire... like a drunk in an old midnight choir... I have tried, in my way, to be free.