Leonard Cohen

Overview

Novelist, poet, musician and fully ordained Zen Buddhist monk: if anyone's played his fair hand at career chameleon, it's Leonard Cohen. After leaving Australia dizzy in January '09 with what was believed to be the greatest tour of his career, the 76-year-old (who was born in the same year as Elvis Presley) is gracing us with his almighty presence yet again this November. For those who missed the boat last year, this is the second chance we'd been praying for. Hallelujah, one might say.  And after selling out his first show, he's added another to the bill.

But it feels like over the past two years, Leonard Cohen was never very far from our hearts. One for speaking directly, candidly, and often ironically to his audience on themes such as love, religion, isolation, sexuality, death and beauty, he was the perfect audio choice for what was probably one of the most confronting Australian public service ad campaigns of all time.

As an internationally acclaimed novelist, Leonard Cohen's transition to folk singer/songwriter in 1967 was seamless, each song a musical extension of his already literary genius. Eight albums later, the Jewish Canadian disappeared into nearly a decade of seclusion, emerging in '99 as a fully ordained Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk named Jikjan. The change in lifestyle fuelled his return to music with incredible focus: he collaborated with other artists to release a further two albums, all the time staying true to the dark, explicit and bitterly ironical tone that we all know and love. As he said during interviews in 1977, 1988, 1997 and 2001, "The heart goes on cooking, sizzling like shish kebab."

He returns to Sydney with his nine-piece band on November 8 and 9. Tickets for the second show are still available.