Last night I was at the Leonard Cohen concert at the Wang Center in Boston. Without any reservations, this was one of the best concert experiences I have ever had. The Wang Center is an amazing venue - with its beautiful ornate ceilings and excellent acoustics.
The concert began promptly with no opening act and ran for three and a half hours. The audience was a mixture of all age groups and the most polite (when appropriate) and raucous (when appropriate) audience I have ever been in.
Leonard Cohen was energetic, humble and gracious the entire evening (in stark contrast to Bob Dylan as I recently heard him at the Garden with Mark Knopfler). He truly wanted to communicate with the audience - when he said we are going to give you all we've got -- he meant it.
He covered a huge swath of his reportoire - starting with Dance Me to the End of Time, and including such classics as Suzanne, Chelsea Hotel, Everybody Knows
, a spoken moving version of 1000 Kisses Deep, Bird on a Wire, and of course his most recent success Hallelujah.
The band was fantastic - they play with remarkable restraint -- i.e. you know that each one of them can (and does) break out into amazing flashes of virtuosity on their respective instruments. Even the backup singers are multi-instrumentalists and when they had their solo number - it was like being sung to by angels in heaven.
Clearly recent events had shaken Mr. Cohen - he pointedly left out the lyric
Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
from Hallelujah.
Each band member got a chance to be featured on different songs - and of course Sharon Robinson - longtime collaborator and co-songwriter got to shine on Alexandra Rising.
Even more striking was that Leonard Cohen thanked and introduced EVERY member of his production team - the sound guys, the lighting guys, the guitar technicians everybody -- he broke up those intros doing half at the end of Act 1 and the other half right before the close of the show.
Many standing ovations later we were all in awe of the experience we had just shared as we walked back to the T at Park street - much much later than we had ever expected.
If you can get tickets to this concert - you have a shot at going tonight December 16th -- do it -- you will love the evening!
