@RipponJo - So excited! V unexpectedly we're off to Leonard Cohen on Sat, with backstage passes to boot. Xmas has come early. #stoked.
@1107nikki 5h - Looking forward to this one #LeonardCohen http://instagram.com/p/iAvuUMmfnx/ http://distilleryimage2.ak.instagram.co ... ba36_8.jpg
@69stacey - What a day but off to see Leonard Cohen tonight - that will be awesome!
[Alexander Bisley - Film critic & arts reviewer at The Lumière Reader]@alexanderbisley –Excited to see Leonard Cohen again on Tuesday. ICYMI, big feature here: http://lumiere.net.nz/index.php/im-your ... ie-simmons …
@Lorellin - Waiting for Leonard Cohen to take the stage! pic.twitter.com/HRgiaP2xtY https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BbqpTuUCAAAflHC.jpg
@savvy_1 - Leonard Cohen is the man! Wellington NZ
@JennyKayNZ - 30+ gathering to hear Leonard Cohen in #Wellington tonight. Music greats never die
@WillAMatthews - The stage is set, and very soon Leonard Cohen will be in my life for a heart stopping 3 hours #hallelujah pic.twitter.com/TacHE7QA0y https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BbquRzhCAAExdZM.jpg
Rev'd Brian Dawson @FrBrianD - Leonard Cohen at TSB Arena pic.twitter.com/WtbvxqSiZz
@ptoothfish - Obligatory Leonard Cohen World Tour Selfie <3 pic.twitter.com/3JrTxM1xqz https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BbquNPXCQAAlhvw.jpg
@ibeardslee - Waiting for Leonard Cohen .. pic.twitter.com/Pdvqnh2SI2 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BbqyDACCUAAwDh6.jpg
[Helen Rickerby – poet, managing editor of JAAM literary mag.]@JennyKayNZ - Spotted @helenrickerby and Sean at #LeonardCohen concert - older crowd than Bauhaus, fully seated, no moshpit
[Martin Bosleys - Restaurant - http://www.martin-bosley.com/ ]@MartinBosleys - Leonard Cohen.
[Philippa Lynne Howden-Chapman Professor of Public Health at the University of Otago]@JennyKayNZ - Spotted Philippa Howden-Chapman and Ralph at #LeonardCohen concert. Band includes a professor of music too. Academia & music a natural fit
@dave_wellington - #leonardcohen yeahhhhh! pic.twitter.com/AaC26EBWTJ
@ptoothfish - Oh my fucking god Leonard Cohen is rocking my face off. And there is a whole nother 90 minute set to go!
@FrBrianD - Rev'd Brian Dawson - Intermission (prostate break) at Leonard Cohen. Feel young in this crowd. Like going to a MU conference! pic.twitter.com/xUOVpAXVRh https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BbrJFf-CUAAIFiF.jpg
@alexanderbisley - Leonard Cohen was again wonderful tonight. Wellington treated again tomorrow
@1107nikki - What a#showman #LeonardCohen http://instagram.com/p/iBTaKomftp/
@LIISAMM - 5 x full house standing ovations @Leonard Cohen
@ptoothfish - I have been to some concerts. That might have been the Best. One. Ever. pic.twitter.com/eZ7oSJxicP
STATIGRAM –@astreeea - Leonard Cohen was fab
Diamonds among the rough
Last updated 06:59 18/12/2013
Leonard Cohen performs in Wellington
MAARTEN HOLL/FAIRFAX NZ
STILL GOT IT: Leonard Cohen performs in Wellington.
REVIEW - Leonard Cohen
TSB Bank Arena, Tuesday, December 17
Reviewed by Colin Morris
The sprightliness belies his age.
This dapper man in a dark suit, the ubiquitous trilby (circa James Bond, From Russia With Love) at a cocky angle and that baleful voice full of gravel and flowers, an instrument of pure joy - yet the bane of much criticism by his detractors - graces the stage once more and, while far from conventional, his pearls of wisdom that drip slowly from his pen via his mouth provoke more discussion than perhaps any songwriter other than Dylan himself.
The art critic Robert Hughes famously once said, "it takes art to make life bearable" and on the surface that seems terribly melancholic but then nobody does melancholy like Mr Cohen.
But to quote Leonard himself: "You know me, I'm the journalist of the inner dismal condition."
Behind the facade of seemingly depressing songs - though there is plenty of humour for those willing to look - there lie diamonds. This lodestone is hewn out of rock whilst Dylan's are formed on the back of napkins.
The result of all this mining is a concert that pleases everybody. The songs are all well known by this most appreciative of audiences, resulting in a Zen-like glow usually reserved for the likes of the late Ravi Shankar, which I'm sure is a result of Cohen's perceived reclusiveness.
There is a sense of admiration for an artist who doesn't hang his washing out for all to see.
Cohen doesn't shatter myths but creates illusions with lyrical ambiguities, songs about unrequited love (Suzanne), the bitter prophesies in Everybody Knows, and My Secret Life reminds us that we all have a secret love in the past we cling to and that may have made us a perfect person.
Then there is Bird On A Wire, Who By Fire and Dance Me To The End Of Love, all from a measly 12 albums over a period of 40-plus years.
As Mr Cohen hinted that this might be his last trip Down Under, we can only say a big, big thank to you and your flawless band, it's been a wonderful love affair.
Leonard Cohen: Melancholy with a winking eye
JULE SCHERER
Last updated 11:29 18/12/2013
Leonard Cohen, Wellington, TSB Bank Arena
December 17
Never has depression been more enjoyable than when watching Leonard Cohen perform.
The grandmaster of melancholy entertained Wellington's audiences with humour, excellent arrangements of the highlights of his 12 albums and a voice that hasn't lost an iota of its growling deepness.
The 79-year-old, who performed for the third time in four years in Wellington, received standing ovations even before he started his 3 1/2-hour show, divided into two sets with three encores to boot.
He thanked the audience in the packed TSB Arena for "climbing to the high place at the back", and, addressing the occupants of the front rows, for "endangering the family budget for acquiring the seats".
His sound technicians did an excellent job with the at times challenging acoustics of the arena, making sure the audience could hear "every single depressing nuance" of Cohen's 26-song set.
The stage was set up with big drapes, and, most importantly, big oriental carpets. Not only did they provide a cosy backdrop for Cohen and his nine musicians, but they were also an important prop, considering that the singer spent a lot of time performing on his knees.
There are no words to be lost on his excellent songwriting and his devoted audience would surely have been happy with whatever the maestro delivered.
But the arrangements with these outstanding musicians, who made many of his mid-period songs more klezmer than disco, made the night even more special.
All fears that Cohen's timbre, his growl, his deep and unique voice would have cracked with age were baseless.
The Canadian poet proved to be in great shape. Occasionally some high notes were a tad pitchy, but, really, who cares.
The whole show was clearly a well-oiled machine, with everybody knowing exactly when and where to move, and the wonderful backup singers, Sharon Robinson and the Webb Sisters, moved mesmerisingly like seaweed in the current.
Cohen did not hog the limelight, but also put the spotlight on his musicians, and let them shine in their solos.
Outstanding were Javier Mas who mastered a whole range of string instruments like the guitar, 12-string bandurria and laud and Alexandru Bublitchi on the violin.
Yes, Cohen has been on the road with this show for quite a while. It might not have been much different from his previous shows (to which I haven't been), but, heck, he managed to connect with the audience, making everybody feel this was a special night.
Cohen is an entertainer, a 79-year-old whose lusty lyrics still ring right, a poet whose recitations of his lyrics still feel like coming from the heart and who has a spring in his step and a winking eye that make watching him an honour.
- © Fairfax NZ News
Thanks for your input. Can you confirm this is the correct setlist for both night?Mabeanie1 wrote:I don't have the technology here to post the setlists but Waiting for the Miracle was inserted in set 1 (both nights) in front of Lover Lover Lover. Leonard played it in response to a special request.
W
@paulluksza - Leonard Cohen in Wellington. Let's get this party started!
[Cecil Wade Brown is Mayor of Wellington]@WellingtonMayor Cecil Wade Brown –All thoughts of draft annual Plan, district plan change and film museum banished as I chill at Leonard Cohen.
@ziehls_in_nz - TSB Arena in anticipation #LeonardCohen pic.twitter.com/BC7pui4R6e https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bbv6ZDIIUAArDHn.jpg
@richarddoone - Leonard Cohen at the TSB Arena tonight. Really looking fwd to a few hours with the folk poet.
@ziehls_in_nz - Looking forward to #LeonardCohen playing pic.twitter.com/Yc3c5ILtaX https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bbv6OFdIAAApuAU.jpg
@ohsarahrose - At Leonard Cohen, v excited. An excellent birthday present @ TSB Bank Arena http://instagram.com/p/iDam-BNOCO/
@StewartLundNZ - Leonard Cohen is indisputably awesome @WgtnVenues
@ohsarahrose Leonard Cohen could get it #hellbeyourman (his back up singers could get it) VIDEO - I’m Your Man - http://instagram.com/p/iDsxSStOM5/#
@richarddoone - An extraordinary first 90 mins from Leonard Cohen and co. What a mandolin! Intermission now.
@seann_nz - Magical at 79, powerful - although I wish I'd spent the extra $100 to be closer! Review: Leonard Cohen in Wellington http://fw.to/EmsKdAG
@ohsarahrose - Leonard Cohen must actually be the spry-est 79 year old ever. And that voice. Oh gosh, he killed me. I'm dead. This is a ghost tweeting.
@ziehls_in_nz - Leonard Cohen is amazing - playing the 3rd encore!! pic.twitter.com/pGk3rg6cYI https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BbwsjInIYAEQXFx.jpg
@raetse_pwv - Leonard Cohen & his band totally kicked butt @WgtnVenues tonight!!! Absolute legend. 79 & still as spritely as ever. Inspirational!
@richarddoone - Breathtaking performance by Leonard Cohen and his band this evening. Wishing I'd worn my hat. (Wishing I still had my hat).
STATIGRAM –@muzzamie - The amazing Leonard Cohen in concert #Wgtn. We didn't want the night to end. pic.twitter.com/ugO4Afp89M
Thank youMabeanie1 wrote:Thanks Andrew!
That setlist is correct Patrick- same both nights.
Wendy
To The Wonder: Leonard Cohen 2013
By Alexander Bisley
December 20, 2013
Lleonard Cohen Old Ideas World Tour, 2013
TSB Bank Arena, Wellington | December 17-18; 21 (Auckland)
“Thanks for the trouble you took from her eyes/ I thought it was there for good, so I never tried.” —Leonard Cohen, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’
Leonard Cohen 2010 was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen. He and his band were again the second and third time I saw him in Wellington this week. Aged 79, the wondrous Cohen still has that voice, that presence, that grace, and that generosity to his band and the audience. Delivering 28 songs over a three hour set, Cohen gave it pretty much everything he had. Never was there the sense he was just going through the motions.
“Give me back my broken night/ my mirrored room, my secret life… And lie beside me baby, that’s an order!” ‘The Future’, second up, was an early highlight. “Things are going to slide in all directions/ Won’t be nothing/ Nothing you can measure anymore/ The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold/ and overturned the order of the soul.” Rarely is an apocalyptic vision rendered with such lyricism.
“Everybody got that broken feeling/ Like their father or dog just died,” a stirring version of ‘Everybody Knows’ with its totemic evocation of the zeitgeist, also scored. Cohen relished delivering the lines: “Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful/ Give or take a night or two/ Everybody knows you’ve been discreet/ But there were so many people you just had to meet/ Without your clothes/ Everybody knows.”
The Queen Wharf Events Centre was hot, but it didn’t matter a bit given the experience we were sharing. On the first night, Cohen thanked his “expert Canadian sound technicians,” how they would make sure the entire audience could hear “every depressing nuance.” True, in an era when it’s not unusual for a leading band like Unknown Mortal Orchestra (a year ago) to have their sound muddied, the music’s clarity and finesse was a joy to behold. Neither too loud (as gigs too often are), or too soft. However, I don’t find Cohen at all depressing or adolescently indulgent (see Radiohead). Cohen comfortingly plumbs life’s sadness, like Schubert’s Die Winterreise.
The nine piece band were uniformly dynamic and precise: Roscoe Beck (musical director, basses); Neil Larsen (keys); Barcelona’s Javier Mas (guitar); Rafael Gayol (drums, percussion); Bob Metzger and Austin’s Mitch Watkins (guitars).
The back-up harmonies of Sharon Robinson, and, especially, the Webb Sisters, Charley and Hattie, were angelic. After an interesting but lesser reinterpretation of ‘The Darkness’, Cohen continued with songs from 2012’s Old Ideas, ‘Amen’ and ‘Come Healing’. The autumnal album’s ‘Going Home’ was a humorously deprecating note in the second half: “I love to speak with Leonard/ He’s a sportsman and a shepherd/ He’s a lazy bastard/ Living in a suit.”
The stirring ‘Anthem’ took us to half time, following ‘Waiting for the Miracle’: “I haven’t been this happy/ since the end of World War II.” It’s true, he hasn’t, and his happiness is infectious.
The second half was even better. After ‘Tower of Song’ and ‘Suzanne’, Cohen gracefully put ‘Chelsea Hotel#2’ into the stratosphere. Passing that scruffy New York hotel recently—and feeling a distressing sense of mortality— I took comfort that future generations will be given hope by the Cohen/Bob Dylan songs inspired there, when we are all gone, like Lou Reed and Janis Joplin. The concert was almost worth seeing for Cohen breathing new life into his moving elegy.
Rocking, rousing versions of ‘I’m Your Man’ (“The beast won’t go to sleep at night!”), ‘Hallelujah’, ‘First We Take Manhattan’, and ‘Closing Time’, were interspersed with the pure poetry of ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’, ‘If It Be Your Will’, and ‘A Thousand Kisses Deep’: “The heart does not retreat”.
It's always enjoyable reading these reviews of Leonard's concerts, as they all have their adulatory variations on the experience.sturgess66 wrote:http://lumiere.net.nz/index.php/leonard-cohen-2013/
To The Wonder: Leonard Cohen 2013
By Alexander Bisley
December 20, 2013
Lleonard Cohen Old Ideas World Tour, 2013
TSB Bank Arena, Wellington | December 17-18; 21 (Auckland)
“Thanks for the trouble you took from her eyes/ I thought it was there for good, so I never tried.” —Leonard Cohen, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’
Leonard Cohen 2010 was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen. He and his band were again the second and third time I saw him in Wellington this week. Aged 79, the wondrous Cohen still has that voice, that presence, that grace, and that generosity to his band and the audience. Delivering 28 songs over a three hour set, Cohen gave it pretty much everything he had. Never was there the sense he was just going through the motions.
“Give me back my broken night/ my mirrored room, my secret life… And lie beside me baby, that’s an order!” ‘The Future’, second up, was an early highlight. “Things are going to slide in all directions/ Won’t be nothing/ Nothing you can measure anymore/ The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold/ and overturned the order of the soul.” Rarely is an apocalyptic vision rendered with such lyricism.
“Everybody got that broken feeling/ Like their father or dog just died,” a stirring version of ‘Everybody Knows’ with its totemic evocation of the zeitgeist, also scored. Cohen relished delivering the lines: “Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful/ Give or take a night or two/ Everybody knows you’ve been discreet/ But there were so many people you just had to meet/ Without your clothes/ Everybody knows.”
The Queen Wharf Events Centre was hot, but it didn’t matter a bit given the experience we were sharing. On the first night, Cohen thanked his “expert Canadian sound technicians,” how they would make sure the entire audience could hear “every depressing nuance.” True, in an era when it’s not unusual for a leading band like Unknown Mortal Orchestra (a year ago) to have their sound muddied, the music’s clarity and finesse was a joy to behold. Neither too loud (as gigs too often are), or too soft. However, I don’t find Cohen at all depressing or adolescently indulgent (see Radiohead). Cohen comfortingly plumbs life’s sadness, like Schubert’s Die Winterreise.
The nine piece band were uniformly dynamic and precise: Roscoe Beck (musical director, basses); Neil Larsen (keys); Barcelona’s Javier Mas (guitar); Rafael Gayol (drums, percussion); Bob Metzger and Austin’s Mitch Watkins (guitars).
The back-up harmonies of Sharon Robinson, and, especially, the Webb Sisters, Charley and Hattie, were angelic. After an interesting but lesser reinterpretation of ‘The Darkness’, Cohen continued with songs from 2012’s Old Ideas, ‘Amen’ and ‘Come Healing’. The autumnal album’s ‘Going Home’ was a humorously deprecating note in the second half: “I love to speak with Leonard/ He’s a sportsman and a shepherd/ He’s a lazy bastard/ Living in a suit.”
The stirring ‘Anthem’ took us to half time, following ‘Waiting for the Miracle’: “I haven’t been this happy/ since the end of World War II.” It’s true, he hasn’t, and his happiness is infectious.
The second half was even better. After ‘Tower of Song’ and ‘Suzanne’, Cohen gracefully put ‘Chelsea Hotel#2’ into the stratosphere. Passing that scruffy New York hotel recently—and feeling a distressing sense of mortality— I took comfort that future generations will be given hope by the Cohen/Bob Dylan songs inspired there, when we are all gone, like Lou Reed and Janis Joplin. The concert was almost worth seeing for Cohen breathing new life into his moving elegy.
Rocking, rousing versions of ‘I’m Your Man’ (“The beast won’t go to sleep at night!”), ‘Hallelujah’, ‘First We Take Manhattan’, and ‘Closing Time’, were interspersed with the pure poetry of ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’, ‘If It Be Your Will’, and ‘A Thousand Kisses Deep’: “The heart does not retreat”.
However, I think the writer of this one must have rushed the job, perhaps unsuccessfully cutting and pasting from a 2010 review: he has included Bob Metzger in the band and left out Alex Bublitchi. 
