Entry tags:

concert, leonard cohen

Leonard Cohen
Yesterday we went to see Leonard Cohen at the O₂ World and I must say.. wow.. what a voice. In fact I wasn't very much familiar with Cohen's music, had just heard 5 or 6 songs of his before, but I thought those were worth it and so we decided to go see him.

Even though his singing and the music was brilliant the atmosphere in the O₂ World was not. We were sitting in the back – which was all we could affort – and had a good view but there were many lights in the hall which were rather distracting. Also the sound could've been delivered more directly to the back. There were only a few speakers at the front next to the stage which is simply not enough for a huge hall like that. I think for 51 Euros per ticket you can expect more than that. So it took us a few songs to get used to that and dive into the sound but then all was great.

There's one more thing I have to tell, because I've never seen a thing like that before. Cohen has this perfect band, ok? I doubt there's a thing they can't play. Still, and maybe even because, for his first song after coming back from the break he came up on the stage with a keyboard and his 3 background singers – no band. Then he say's something like "You probably haven't seen this before.. it's very sophisticated" and he presses some key on the keyboard and it starts playing a song. Then he and the girls are singing a song only accompagnied by that keyboard and maybe a few chords from the organ in the background. Strange. But good, it felt real pure. And it was all about the singing, anyways. :-)

Cool video of him singing Hallelujah at Glastonbury last year.