The new musical life of Leonard Cohen revisited by the cream of performers

The best way to rediscover 12 pearls of Leonard Cohen with Here it is, a record that unites everything, his poetry, his spirituality, his freedom and all the richness of his repertoire; of his first opus in 1967, Songs of Leonard Cohento his final album, You Want It Darker, released just days before his death in 2016.

(1967) Susannawonderful excerpt from the mythical first album Songs of Leonard Cohen. His best work by his own admission. The perfect alchemy between its share of spirituality and sensuality which will become its trademark. Covered here by the sublime soulful voice of Gregory Porter, Susanna recounts his relationship with the dancer Suzanne Verdal, in Montreal, during the summer of 1965.

A Tribute to Leonard Cohen revisits other emblematic songs of the singer with an exceptional group of jazz musicians and an extraordinary cast of performers from all walks of life, from Peter Gabriel, to Mavis Staples via Iggy Pop, who gives us a subtle version of the powerful You Want It Darker

You want it darkernamed after the final album of the same name, by Leonard Cohen, released a few weeks before his death in 2016. Iggy Pop says: “There is no one like Leonard, not in the whole world”.

In his fourteenth and last album, Leonard Cohen took over his keyboards, bass and percussion, with the collaboration of his son, Adam Cohen, on guitar and producing six songs. Steer your way taken up with intensity by the American jazz singer Norah Jones, offers new life to this less familiar title.

“I loved singing this song because it may be recent, it has all the qualities of its great classics” told Norah Jones. This perfectly reflects the strength of Leonard Cohen during all these years and why he touches all generations, he had the gift of making his songs timeless thanks to his talents as a poet and also thanks to his multiple personality: adventurer, novelist, mystic , ladies’ man, Jew, Buddhist, citizen of the world, elegant, nostalgic, Leonard Cohen has spent his life demonstrating that what matters is not the arrival, but what you meet on the road.

1966, Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye, this song half written in pencil, on a tired bed in the Penn Terminal Hotel, in a room that is too hot and whose windows are boarded up, like Leonard Cohen, in the middle of a quarrel with a blond woman, patience, deliverance is coming…

Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen’s universal anthem taken up by many artists, including Bob Dylan and Jeff Buckley, ignored when it was released almost forty years ago. Also note, Hallelujah, The Words of Leonard Cohen, a documentary to be seen in theaters on October 19.

And the scrapbook Here It Is: A Tribute To Leonard Cohen comes out today.