Leonard Cohen

The State Kremlin Palace : The State Kremlin Palace
План зала
Event date:
Oct 07 2010
Event time:
19:00

The figure of Leonard Cohen stands separately in the world of modern music. He has a lot of imitators and there are much more of those who were influenced by his creativity, but his own songs are not beyond any definite genre identification. And Cohen’s biography itself doesn’t typical for the popular musician.
To the moment of appearance of his first disc Songs of Leonard Cohen at the end of 1967 thirty-three-year-old Cohen had enough high reputation of the poet and writer. In the middle of 1960th Cohen arrived at a conclusion that writing didn’t guarantee enough provided life for him and he decided to become a "country singer". He moved from Montreal but not to Nashville, the capital of country music, he arrived to New York where he got acquaintance with some figures of new American music scene including Judy Collins, who insert two of his songs in her album of 1966; these songs soon became popular: Suzanne and Dress Rehearsal Rag.
Being busy with music Cohen didn’t stop working at poetical collections. His books Parasites of Heaven, Selected Poems 1956–68 and Energy of Slaves were published during this period. In 1972 the concert album Live Songs was released. He delved deeply into Zen Buddhism under discipleship of master Roshi, worked at the books of poems. In 1984 his new disc Various Positions appeared. "I always wanted to connect this Middle Eastern or East European sound with the abilities of jazz or rock’n’roll rhythm section", – said Cohen. This fact explains such great popularity of Leonard Cohen’s songs in Russia.
During 1980th Cohen showed himself in some spheres unexpected for his audience: he shooted a short film I am the Hotel by his own script, took occasional part in the serial Miami Vice, continued publishing of his own books. At the beginning of  1980th his book Book of Mercy appeared, and at the beginning of 1990th – Stranger Music, which included the texts of many Cohen’s songs.
Leonard Cohen’s compositions were performed by great amount of different singers. Many famous musicians assembled together twice to acknowledge Leonard Cohen by the disc-tribute which consisted on his compositions in their performing. One of these albums I'm your Fan appeared in 1991. It united many famous musicians of independent rock: Nick Cave, John Cale, Pixies and others, and in 1995 pop musicians paid tribute to Cohen: in the album Tower of Song Cohen’s songs were performed by Sting, Bono, Elton John, Billy Joel and many others.