Sydney to host Leonard Cohen festival
A one-day festival of theatre, talks and music will celebrate the poet and songwriter, and the Jewish roots that shaped his work.
Leonard Cohen’s songs have soundtracked weddings, funerals and plenty of quiet nights in. A decade after his death, Sydney is getting a festival dedicated to the man behind them.
The Leonard Cohen Festival will take over Bondi Pavilion, featuring writers, playwrights, performers and musicians for an afternoon and evening of theatre, conversation and music inspired by the Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist, who died in 2016.
Born in Montreal in 1934, Cohen grew up in a prominent Jewish family and was proud of his descent from the Kohanim, the priestly line. He was ordained a Buddhist monk in 1996, yet continued to identify as Jewish. In 1973, he performed for Israeli troops during the Yom Kippur War.
His appreciation for his Jewish heritage runs through his writing. Hallelujah draws on the biblical stories of David and Samson, and his final album, You Want It Darker, released weeks before his death, opens with a title track featuring the choir of Montreal’s Congregation Shaar Hashomayim and the Hebrew word Hineni, meaning “here I am”.
Canadian author Michael Posner, whose three-volume oral biography, Leonard Cohen: Untold Stories, draws on interviews with more than 550 people who knew the singer, will be the keynote speaker.
Posner told The AJN in 2021 that he considers Cohen “one of the towering cultural figures of our time”. He said he was struck by how much effort went into the songs, with Cohen sometimes labouring over a single lyric for years. Hallelujah took a decade to write.
“I knew he had worked hard, but I had no idea exactly how hard,” Posner said.
Audiences will also see the world premiere of a new play about Cohen by Australian playwright Timothy Daly, directed by theatre-maker Moira Blumenthal. Ensemble readings and a panel discussion with artists whose work has been influenced by Cohen will fill out the afternoon, before an evening concert exploring the spiritual and poetic themes in his songs.
Festival organiser Stephen Katz said the event would explore not only Cohen’s artistic legacy, but also the Jewish roots that informed so much of his work.
“Leonard Cohen was an extraordinary artist, but for me, and I guess for many people in the Jewish community, his work also offers a fascinating window into Jewish identity, spirituality and culture,” he said. “This is something we wanted to place at the heart of the festival.
“There’s a certain Cohen-like irony in putting on a festival about a man whose work so often explored faith, identity, love, mortality and belonging, mostly with great beauty, but sometimes from a very dark place. I suspect he’d approve that we’ve managed to turn all of that into an afternoon and evening of music, theatre, conversation and hopefully more than a little laughter.”
Katz said he hopes holding the festival so close to the site of the Bondi terror attack “will provide a space for reflection through culture, music and community”.
To book tickets visit events.humanitix.com/leonard-cohen-festival