Chris Botti: Hallelujah from a nearby roof, then projection of Leonard singing it on giant screens
Zachary Richard: Bird On A Wire
Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Partisan
Steven Page: A Singer Must Die
Adam Cohen: Take This Waltz
Adam Cohen with Serena Ryder: Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye
Serena Ryder: Sisters Of Mercy
Madeleine Peyroux: Dance Me To The End Of Love
Katie Melua: In My Secret Life
Lhasa de Sela with Thomas Hellman: So Long, Marianne
Lhasa de Sela: Who By Fire
Steven Page with Joe Lovano on the saxophone: Memories
Chris Botti (trumpet): A Thousand Kisses Deep with the words projected on the back of the stage
Garou: Everybody Knows
Michel Pagliaro: The Future
Leonard on the screen singing Closing Time
Artists come on stage for farewell with Adam Cohen center stage
Head of the Festival, Andre Menard, comes on stage to present award to Adam
Leonard on screen singing Suzanne
The Gazette
- June 27, 2008 by Mark LePage and John Griffin (Photo: John Kenney, the Gazette)
An evening of music and the candlelit muse. In the big crowd, the aura of dignified tribute meets with passionately expressed fandom
So this is how the light gets in.
On opening night, the Montreal International Jazz Festival exhaled a Hallelujah over Ste. Catherine St. W. in tribute to a native son, a citizen of song and Canada's greatest writer. As night fell, and Chris Botti's trumpet floated down from the balcony of the Hyatt Hotel, the crowd exhaled back.
As you may have noticed, Cohen is a big name in this town - a king really - and the jazz fest showed soul in front-loading its 29th program with his live return to Montreal after 15 years (to Place des Arts, no less) and a full-on tribute blowout on a sultry June night. On Ste. Catherine St., the air was as heavy as your last relationship. Which was apt. Because nobody has written heavier, sultrier songs than Leonard Cohen.
The man himself appeared only onscreen (prompting one cynic to offer, "I didn't know we were here to watch videos"). But no - we were here to listen to the deathless voice and praise the songbook. After Cohen's video appearance, Zachary Richard came out to sing "a song I first learned 35 years ago and have been singing ever since." He and guitarist Rick Haworth delivered a night-filling Bird on a Wire.
In the crowd, the air of dignified tribute met with some passionately expressed fandom. Rici Lake is originally from the Northwest Territories. Liana Cisneros is from Peru, where they met when Lake lived there for a decade. They now call Zurich home - an internationalism that seemed designed for the evening and the honoree. "We came for the festival and for Leonard," said the ponytailed Lake.
"We saw Leonard in concert on Wednesday," said Cisneros. "It was our dream, the best show we've ever seen. Young artists can be very jealous of this guy. Nearly 80 but a very young person at heart. This show was a life gift."
Montrealers Arlene Berg and Wally Sachs are old friends who ran into each other at the show. "We're here for the fabulous festival," she said, "for the music, the people-watching and particularly for Leonard Cohen - I love him."
Buffy Sainte-Marie brought the era, the vibrato and the franco with The Partisan. And Stephen Page brought the Toronto and a big voice to A Singer Must Die.
Of course, having Adam Cohen come out for Take This Waltz could only trump it. If the son was intimidated by hoisting the torch, he didn't show it. "Bonsoir," he said, then, "wow. Alors, vous l'aimez aussi?" Wearing unLeonard jeans, he owned his moment.
After some brief retuning, he was joined by Serena Ryder for Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye. She sounded like Emmylou Harris - until she sounded like Piaf in The Sisters of Mercy.
The cabaret came from Madeleine Peyroux with appropriate ooh-la-la in Dance Me To the End of Love, James Beard barrelhousing on piano.
It wasn't a dance evening. It was torch, under yet another sky that had threatened rain but held it off.
In truth, it could have used Cohen in the flesh, or the many McGarrigle-Wainwrights.
What-ifs. What we had was Chris Botti searing 1000 Kisses Deep, Katie Melua smoldering In My Secret Life, and an evening with the music and the candlelit muse.
Toward the show's end, highlights came from Garou with a great Everybody Knows, and a positively Jerry Garcia-looking Michel Pagliaro in full freak beard and hair absolutely dominating The Future.
Hometown boys, baby.
As night fell, Chris Botti's trumpet floated down to the tens of thousands in the crowd. It wasn't a dance evening. It was torch, under yet another sky that had threatened rain but held it off.
'He's someone who makes you want to know him more'
Leonard Cohen's enigmatic presence seemed to lurk throughout a tribute concert to his art performed by other artists last night, and it only made his fans more devoted.
Nobody knew if Cohen himself would show up, but the possibility was worth it, they said.
"He really is someone who makes you want to know him more" on a personal level, Jacques Lalande, 60, a retired psychotherapist, said as he waited for an 18-song tribute to start on the main stage of the Montreal International Jazz Festival on Ste. Catherine St. W.
Tens of thousands of fans filled up the street for several blocks starting at Place des Arts.
It was the opening free show of the festival, and many people who weren't diehard Cohen fans were willing to be wowed by the songwriter's lyrics.
"I'm here to see if it's all true," Henri Dubé, 65, said. "He's supposed to be a very good poet."
Smoking a cigar as he sat in a firetruck parked on St. Urbain St. - just in case of an emergency - firefighter Benoît Chayer noted "the calming effect" Cohen's words and melodies seemed to have on the crowd.
"They're good-spirited fans," he said.
Maureen Foran, 46, said she "grew up" with Cohen's music because her mother played it all the time.
His music's power, she said, comes from the contemplation in it, she said.
"If you care about what someone has to say, his well runs deep," she said.
In a show where the performers were also the master's most prominent fans, singer Lhasa De Sela gushed that she had seen one of Leonard Cohen's three recent sold-out Place des Arts concerts.
"I'm very happy to walk this planet with that man. He's such an inspiration," she said, before launching into a rendition of Cohen's Who by Fire.
The lineup of 11 singers included Cohen's son Adam. Although many fans said they felt a link with the senior Cohen, Jaqui Poser actually babysat Adam in the 1970s when he was 2 years old.
"He was a lovely boy," said Poser, now a fundraiser for The Study, a private girls' school in Westmount.
"He was always telling people he loved them," she recalled of Adam, who sang Take This Waltz and also performed a duet of Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye, with Serena Ryder.
Poser said Leonard Cohen often sat and talked to her and her teenage friends at the Cohen home on Ste. Dominique St. "He really wanted to hear what we were about," she said.
Chris Botti, one of at least 15 instrumental musicians on hand, said his appearance at the concert sprang partly from the success he has had playing two of Cohen's songs all over the world.
"I've played Hallelujah and 1,000 Kisses Deep and people love them," Botti told The Gazette shortly before the show, which he opened with Hallelujah.
"They've become hits for me," Botti said. "I feel privileged to play them here" in Montreal.
The New York Times
- June 28, 2008 by Ben Sisario (Photos: Yannick Grandmont/New York Times)
MONTREAL — On Wednesday night, in the last of his three concerts presented as preludes to the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Leonard Cohen, the 73-year-old hometown poet-hero on tour for the first time in 15 years, said that on his last time through town he was “60 years old, just a kid with a crazy dream.” Between waves of applause and hollers in French and English, he added, “I am so grateful to be here and to be from here.”
Mr. Cohen’s math notwithstanding, hometown pride and musical reverence are at the center of the festival, which opened its 29th season on Thursday and runs through July 6. Billing itself as the largest jazz festival in the world, it attracts one million visitors a year to more than 500 concerts in a three-block music zone downtown and brings about $100 million in revenue to the city, according to Canadian government estimates.
With CD sales in a chronic slump, the music industry has been turning increasingly to live events for income, and in recent years big smorgasbord festivals have sprouted up all over North America, aiming to present all kinds of music for all kinds of people. But with a setting ideal for tourists as well as for local residents, and a solid history of eclectic programming — among the attractions this year are Woody Allen, Al Green, Aretha Franklin, Public Enemy and the local debut of Steely Dan — Montreal has held on to a rare prestige.
“There is no parallel in North America and perhaps no parallel around the world,” said Scott Southard, a jazz and world-music booking agent who has 15 artists at the festival. “In Europe or Bonnaroo, for instance, they have to erect an entire village in a remote location. Here you have an urban environment without having to reconstruct the venue infrastructure every year.”
Begun in 1980 by two concert promoters, Alain Simard and André Ménard, as a way to fill up what was then a dry summer concert calendar, the festival takes over four concert halls of the Place des Arts performing arts complex as well as numerous theaters and clubs around the perimeter. Several blocks of downtown streets are closed for outdoor stages, retail and food booths and children’s activities. Despite the size, Mr. Simard, the president of the festival’s parent company, L’Équipe Spectra, said that “the goal is not to be the biggest jazz festival in the world, it’s to be the best.”
But as the festival approaches its 30th season, it is preparing to grow even bigger, with help from a four-year, $120 million government plan to develop the area around Place des Arts. The first phase, to be completed by next summer, includes a 75,000-square-foot park and performance ground, the Place du Quartier des Spectacles. The festival has also been given a 30-year lease and a $10 million grant from the Province of Quebec to renovate a nearby vacant building; when completed it will add one club for use year-round.
As a tourist draw second only to Grand Prix du Canada, the Formula One race held in Montreal in early June, the jazz festival has become an important symbol of Montreal’s cosmopolitan lifestyle, said Charles Lapointe, the chief executive of Tourism Montreal, a nonprofit agency financed through a hotel tax.
“The jazz festival exemplifies perfectly what we are presenting on the foreign market,” Mr. Lapointe said. “You can celebrate on the streets without any problems with security and express all the pleasure you want.”
Civic pride and creative abundance was clear on Thursday, the official opening. (Mr. Cohen’s touring schedule prevented him from being part of the festival proper; he appears at the enormous Glastonbury pop festival in Britain on Sunday.)
During the afternoon crowds gradually filled up the Place des Arts campus, slurping on ice cream cones beside the fountain and listening to the sound check for a tribute to Mr. Cohen featuring Chris Botti, Madeleine Peyroux, Buffy Sainte-Marie and others. Darting between indoor evening concerts by the veteran jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, the young British songwriter Katie Melua and the African performers Vieux Farka Touré and Salif Keita, a visitor could quickly take in half a dozen outdoor concerts, parades and magicians. Two-thirds of the concerts are free.
The Cohen tribute drew an estimated audience of 100,000, filling the plaza and nearby streets. But the concerts by Mr. Cohen himself were the clear early highlight. Dressed like a spy in a crisp black suit and fedora, Mr. Cohen, who has said that after years in a Zen Buddhist retreat in California, his lifelong depression has finally begun to lift, sang a sleek and emotional set of nearly three hours. In “Bird on the Wire,” “Hallelujah” and “Tower of Song” he sang of being weighted down by cynicism and starving for affection, but between songs he doffed his hat and smiled broadly for sustained ovations.
The festival, a nonprofit enterprise run by the for-profit company L’Équipe Spectra, has an operating budget of $25 million. And though about 18 percent of that comes from national, provincial and city sources, the biggest form of government support is the closing of several blocks of busy city streets. The bulk of the budget comes from corporate sponsorships (40 percent) and sales of tickets and memorabilia (39 percent).
The prominence of sponsorships gives the festival a sense of hyperbranding. Looking over Place des Arts, it is almost impossible not to see a giant symbol of General Motors, the lead sponsor: besides GM logos on banners and fliers throughout the grounds, the company also has five displays of new cars for contests, and at least one of the many marching bands wended its way around, wearing black GM T-shirts.
Festival organizers say that they have made efforts to ensure that the sponsorship is tasteful and not intrusive. Signs are only seen outdoors, where concerts are free, they say. There is no advertising for the paid concerts indoors, and the organizers say they will not rename the event to suit any sponsor. To create an egalitarian atmosphere, the festival also shuns velvet ropes.
“You will never see a V.I.P. area on the site,” Mr. Ménard said. “There’s never a place where people walk and are told, ‘No, that’s not for you.’ The unemployed can stand next to the president of the sponsor company.”
For the Cohen tribute on Thursday night, however, there was a small area of bleachers near the stage reserved for the news media and others. But a reporter who lacked the necessary badges was still able to enter with a few kind words. And unlike many large festivals, this one had a network of fenced-off pathways that made quick travel through even a crowd of 100,000 tightly packed fans on Thursday evening easy for anyone needing or wanting to get through.
“The vibe is very peaceful,” Mr. Ménard said of the festival. “The fabric of this city is all about the quality of life. The fact is, we have long, deadly winters, so come summertime, everybody is in for a party — but a civilized party.”
A tribute to Cohen on Thursday filled the Place des Arts, the center of the festival, and spilled into surrounding streets.
Performers included Garou, the popular Quebecois singer.
The rock singer Michel Pagliaro, another Montreal native, also sang at the tribute.
Michel Pagliaro a même fait danser des spectateurs en leur servant une The Future rock and roll tout à fait assumée.
Michel Pagliaro even had some spectators dancing with his rock and roll interpretation of The Future.
Près de 100 000 personnes sont venues entendre l'hommage à Leonard Cohen.
Nearly 100 000 people came to hear the tribute to Leonard Cohen.
Steven Page, des Barenaked Ladies, a été le premier à jouer la carte du showbiz.
Steven Page of Barenaked Ladies, was the first to play the card of showbiz.
Un vibrant hommage a été rendu à Leonard Cohen jeudi soir au Festival de Jazz.
A glowing tribute was paid to Leonard Cohen Thursday evening at Jazz Festival.
Garou a chanté Everybody Knows.
Garou sang Everybody Knows.
Garou s'en donne à coeur joie.
Garou sings to his heart's content.
Adam Cohen, le fils du chanteur Leonard Cohen honoré jeudi soir.
Adam Cohen, son of the singer Leonard Cohen honored Thursday evening.
Zachary Richard, très en voix, a lancé le bal avec Bird On a Wire.
Zachary Richard, in good voice, launched the ball with Bird on a Wire.
Lhasa et Thomas Hellman étaient plus fidèles que Cohen aux classiques So Long Marianne et Who By Fire.
Lhasa and Thomas Hellman were more faithful than Cohen himself to the traditional rendition of So Long Marianne and Who By Fire.
June 26, 2008 - Youtube by rlamtk and transcript and translation by Roger Huot, Montreal
Presentator: "Do you know what this is?... It is the Montreal Jazz Festival Spirit Award... Adam, will you please remit this prize to Leonard Cohen on behalf of the Jazz Festival; thank you for being here"
Adam: "Thank you. I did not come as an ambassador but as a fan like you. Thanks to all these artists, thanks to all of you... I have only one question for you,... that's easy" (here Adam looks at the trophy). "I will walk home tonight going up St Lawrence street... will you hold it" (the trophy, handing it to the presentator). "I have but one question to ask you: Would you like another song?... Would you appreciate if it was a Leonard Cohen's song?... It so happens that this last song was written here in Montreal 40 years ago, and you know it, even if you don't know it very well... Suzanne Takes You Down..."
Presentator: "By Leonard Cohen himself, a last video from the magic tour that brought him this week in Montreal...so we are going to watch, to end the evening in beauty, Leonard's rendition of Suzanne. Thank you and so long."
