Leonard Cohen concert take this waltz
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Leonard cohen - the future. Jools Holland
Live on the Jools Holland show around the mid 90s Leonard Cohen Future Live Jools Holland
Leonard Cohen News
, October 11, 2007
The whole Philip Glass celebration had been going along so nicely, too.
First there was a lovely, intimate recital in Herbst Theatre, with the composer himself participating. Then there was the premiere of the inconsistent but often potent "Appomattox," still running at the San Francisco Opera.
But on Tuesday night, the third shoe dropped with a fetid, soul-deadening thud onto the stage of Stanford's Memorial Auditorium, and there was nothing to do but avert one's eyes and ears in disbelieving horror.
"Book of Longing," which opened the new season at Stanford Lively Arts, is an evening-long song cycle that weds Glass' music with the words of songwriter Leonard Cohen. It comprises nearly two dozen numbers, performed without intermission by a quartet of singers and an eight-member instrumental ensemble, and there is scarcely a moment in the piece that doesn't inspire shame.
Long, tedious, witless and numbingly repetitive, "Book of Longing" is a sort of perversely virtuosic display of awfulness. The only thing keeping it from being utterly negligible is its unshakable air of grandiose self-importance.
That air, as well as much of the awfulness, stems chiefly from Cohen's lyrics, a stream of undercooked apercus and barely veiled self-regard. The texts encompass love songs, political commentary, Skid Row posturing and more, all of it channeled through a filter of pretentiousness.
The pretentiousness may contribute to his reputation as an artist, but beneath his long-standing pose of a sensitive hipster, Cohen retains the sensibility of a frat boy on the lookout for a sexual score. The text of one interminable song, "The Night of Santiago," could be rendered more succinctly as "I met this awesome chick one time and we, like, totally did it."
Yet even that might have been tolerable if Cohen's use of language were not so impoverished, his writing such a morass of monosyllables and clunky end-rhymes. One representative couplet can stand in for the rest: "The Paris sky is blue and bright/ I want to fly with all my might."
I guess there are some who could hear that and, like Homer Simpson, murmur appreciatively, "Mmmm ... poetry!" The rest of us can only blanch.
Cohen's doggerel in turn brings out the worst in Glass, a composer who should never be given a pretext for writing foursquare rhythms in neat four-bar phrases. The unexpected has never played a very large part in his aesthetic, but I don't think he's ever written anything as predictable as "Book of Longing"; you can practically tell from the opening strains of one song how the next one will end.
Tuesday's performance was the one the piece deserved. The singers, Dominique Plaisant, Tara Hugo, Will Erat and Daniel Keeling, seemed to be staging a competition to see who had the patchiest top notes, the breathiest phrasing and the weakest pitch (verdict: four-way tie).
Conductor Michael Riesman, a stalwart veteran of Glass' work, couldn't sustain a strong beat. The production, staged by director Susan Marshall, involved the projection of a series of Cohen's line drawings: endless self-portraits, endless naked ladies, and a saltshaker.
But was there nothing to recommend, you may ask, nothing at all to savor? Well, Glass did insert a series of instrumental solos, and freed from Cohen's influence, the performance leapt briefly to life (one soloist, bassist Eleonore Oppenheim, delivered her assignment with particular eloquence).
And in one song, "How Much I Love You," Glass writes a beautiful instrumental figure for woodwinds and strings in parallel thirds that serves as a welcome reminder of how ravishing his music can sometimes sound. If it were sung expressively and in tune, that one could make a serviceable outtake.
The whole Philip Glass celebration had been going along so nicely, too.
First there was a lovely, intimate recital in Herbst Theatre, with the composer himself participating. Then there was the premiere of the inconsistent but often potent "Appomattox," still running at the San Francisco Opera.
But on Tuesday night, the third shoe dropped with a fetid, soul-deadening thud onto the stage of Stanford's Memorial Auditorium, and there was nothing to do but avert one's eyes and ears in disbelieving horror.
"Book of Longing," which opened the new season at Stanford Lively Arts, is an evening-long song cycle that weds Glass' music with the words of songwriter Leonard Cohen. It comprises nearly two dozen numbers, performed without intermission by a quartet of singers and an eight-member instrumental ensemble, and there is scarcely a moment in the piece that doesn't inspire shame.
Long, tedious, witless and numbingly repetitive, "Book of Longing" is a sort of perversely virtuosic display of awfulness. The only thing keeping it from being utterly negligible is its unshakable air of grandiose self-importance.
That air, as well as much of the awfulness, stems chiefly from Cohen's lyrics, a stream of undercooked apercus and barely veiled self-regard. The texts encompass love songs, political commentary, Skid Row posturing and more, all of it channeled through a filter of pretentiousness.
The pretentiousness may contribute to his reputation as an artist, but beneath his long-standing pose of a sensitive hipster, Cohen retains the sensibility of a frat boy on the lookout for a sexual score. The text of one interminable song, "The Night of Santiago," could be rendered more succinctly as "I met this awesome chick one time and we, like, totally did it."
Yet even that might have been tolerable if Cohen's use of language were not so impoverished, his writing such a morass of monosyllables and clunky end-rhymes. One representative couplet can stand in for the rest: "The Paris sky is blue and bright/ I want to fly with all my might."
I guess there are some who could hear that and, like Homer Simpson, murmur appreciatively, "Mmmm ... poetry!" The rest of us can only blanch.
Cohen's doggerel in turn brings out the worst in Glass, a composer who should never be given a pretext for writing foursquare rhythms in neat four-bar phrases. The unexpected has never played a very large part in his aesthetic, but I don't think he's ever written anything as predictable as "Book of Longing"; you can practically tell from the opening strains of one song how the next one will end.
Tuesday's performance was the one the piece deserved. The singers, Dominique Plaisant, Tara Hugo, Will Erat and Daniel Keeling, seemed to be staging a competition to see who had the patchiest top notes, the breathiest phrasing and the weakest pitch (verdict: four-way tie).
Conductor Michael Riesman, a stalwart veteran of Glass' work, couldn't sustain a strong beat. The production, staged by director Susan Marshall, involved the projection of a series of Cohen's line drawings: endless self-portraits, endless naked ladies, and a saltshaker.
But was there nothing to recommend, you may ask, nothing at all to savor? Well, Glass did insert a series of instrumental solos, and freed from Cohen's influence, the performance leapt briefly to life (one soloist, bassist Eleonore Oppenheim, delivered her assignment with particular eloquence).
And in one song, "How Much I Love You," Glass writes a beautiful instrumental figure for woodwinds and strings in parallel thirds that serves as a welcome reminder of how ravishing his music can sometimes sound. If it were sung expressively and in tune, that one could make a serviceable outtake.
Leonard Cohen The Future by John Bliemer
Interviews by Leonard Cohen and Rufus Wainwright. "Chelsea Hotel No 2" performance by Rufus Wainwright
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