Various Artists - Tower of Song - A Memorial Tribute to Leonard Cohen, Centre Bell, Montreal, Canada, 11-6-2017

Leonard Cohen died in 2016 at the age of 82. Exactly one year later, his son Adam Cohen put on a memorial concert. Leonard had specifically asked that such a concert be held in Montreal, Canada, so that's where it happened. It was broadcast on Canadian television and radio through the CBC, and later sold as a DVD, but it has never been released as an album. But it was professionally recorded thanks to the broadcasts, so it sounds great here.

This album is based on the CBC radio broadcast, which had great sound quality. (The DVD misses a bunch of songs.) However, there was a big problem with that broadcast, in that someone did a voiceover to talk over all the applause between songs, usually to introduce the next performer. This was very annoying since it was clearly added later and not part of the actual concert. Worse, the voice sometimes went over to the start of the next song. So thank God for audio editing programs like UVR5. I was able to use that to wipe out the voiceover which keeping the underlying applause and/or music. This means there are no verbal introductions of the performers. I don't know if that was the case in the actual concert or not. But you can just look at the song list here.

I also had a few problems with some missing music. Two songs weren't included in the radio broadcast, for whatever reason: "Tower of Song" and "Everybody Knows." That's when the DVD came in handy, because those ones happened to be included. But there was a problem with another song that I couldn't solve, "Closing Time." This was the last song of the concert, and it appears the radio show ran out of time, because it cut the song off before it ended. To make matters worse, the DVD didn't include that song. So there was nothing I could do. I added a chorus to the end of the song so the ending wouldn't seem so weird (which is why it has "[Edit]" in the title. But I didn't have a way to give the music a proper ending after that, so I still had it fade out.

Now, let's get to the performers. I really like the list of performers, including some big names, like Sting and Elvis Costello. But one has to put a kind of asterisk next to the performance of "Tower of Song," with no less than Willie Nelson, Celine Dion, Peter Gabriel, Chris Martin & Leonard Cohen all singing lead vocals on it! That was prerecorded elsewhere, probably due to those artists not being able to attend the concert in person. And note the involvement of Cohen on that song. I'm guessing a recording from a concert before his death was used and cleverly edited in to go with the other voices. A similar recorded performance happened to Cohen's voice on "A Thousand Kisses Deep."

Note that I wanted to keep the focus on the music, so I cut out some non-musical bits. For instance, there was a long speech by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and his wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau. I removed all of that. However, I did keep the recitation of a poem by actor Seth Rogen, since that was an interesting poem by Cohen.

If you're a fan of Cohen's songs at all, you really should give this a listen. Pretty much all the performances were solid, though I think k. d. lang was the highlight with her version of "Hallelujah."

This album is an hour and 57 minutes long.

01 Dance Me to the End of Love (Sting)
02 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (Feist)
03 Who by Fire (Patrick Watson)
04 I'm Your Man (Sharon Robinson)
05 Democracy (Lumineers)
06 A Thousand Kisses Deep (Leonard Cohen [Recording])
07 Suzanne (Ron Sexsmith)
08 The Future (Elvis Costello)
09 Famous Blue Raincoat (Damien Rice)
10 So Long, Marianne (Adam Cohen with the Webb Sisters)
11 Hallelujah (k. d. lang)
12 Tower of Song [Recording] (Willie Nelson, Celine Dion, Peter Gabriel, Chris Martin & Leonard Cohen)
13 Sisters of Mercy (Sting)
14 Chelsea Hotel No. 2 (Lana Del Rey & Adam Cohen)
15 In My Secret Life (Bettye LaVette)
16 Everybody Knows (Courtney Love)
17 Field Commander Cohen [Poem] (Seth Rogen)
18 If It Be Your Will (Borns with the Webb Sisters)
19 The Partisan (Coeur de Pirate, Adam Cohen & Damien Rice)
20 Bird on a Wire (Elvis Costello)
21 Anthem (Sting)
22 Coming Back to You (Adam Cohen & Basia Bulat)
23 Closing Time [Edit] (Basia Bulat)

https://www.imagenetz.de/acxKz

The cover is the poster for this concert. However, I had to make some changes to get a rectangular poster to fit into a square space. I repositioned some things using Photoshop. I also updated some of the artist names at the bottom to better reflect who actually performed at the concert. For instance, it had mentioned Phillip Glass, who didn't show, and failed to mention some, like Ron Sexsmith, Courtney Love, and Bettye LaVette, who did show.