leonardcohenforum.com

Bennyboy wrote:

yopietro wrote:

Tamaraz wrote:oh my goodness, oh my goodness.....I LOVE THIS SONG.....

ok Im going to say something, and I know some wont agree, and I know I could be very wrong, and I also know Im biased - so Im saying all of that upfront - but it would not surprise me one bit if Leonard Cohen had a late life conversion to roman catholic or eastern orthodox....his interest in, understanding of, and writing about the gospels and Jesus - its so deep and he clearly has a passion for it. Now - it could simply be he has a passion for it and not a "belief" per se - I accept that - but Im just saying - if it happened - it wouldn't surprise me!

Only Leonard could speak for himself, but I highly doubt he has had any kind of religious conversion. Leonard has always affirmed that he is a Jew. Of course that doesn't preclude him in his life from using Christian imagery or from a devoted practice to the tenets of zen buddhism. Being Jewish doesn't not mean that one can't have a deep appreciation for the story of Jesus (or for the Buddha for that matter).

I think it's called spread betting.

yopietro wrote:
Or buffet style spirituality. Ignore the defrosted crabcakes and the limp discoloured sweet potatoes. Go for the lemon chicken and the asparagus.

'He is realizing that there is more road behind him than there is ahead'
Montreal cantor helps Leonard Cohen on road back to his Jewish roots
With back-up singers including Cantor Gideon Zelermyer and the Congregation Shaar Hashomayim men’s choir, the soon-to-be-released ‘You Want It Darker’ is 82-year-old songster’s most Jewish — and some say best — work

By RENEE GHERT-ZAND

What critics and fans are calling Leonard Cohen‘s darkest song yet has turned out to be a bright spot in a Montreal cantor’s career.

“You Want It Darker” — the first track released this week from the 82-year-old Cohen’s new album of the same name — features the voice of Cantor Gideon Zelermyer of Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, the oldest and largest traditional Ashkenazi congregation in Canada.

While the 40-year-old Zelermyer told The Times of Israel he was astounded to have been personally asked by the legendary poet and singer-songwriter to sing on the album, the collaboration did not come totally out of the blue. Cohen and the cantor have been corresponding for the past eight or nine years, mainly exchanging birthday and holiday greetings. The epistolary relationship began after Cohen’s aunt sent him some of the cantor’s CDs with Shaar Hashomayim’s professional all-male choir’s music. Cohen sent Zelermyer his compliments.

“He always signs his notes to me, ‘Fraternally, Eliezer’ — Eliezer being his Hebrew name,” the cantor shared.

According to Zelermyer, Cohen was clearly looking to literally return to his own Jewish roots with this album. While in the past the Montreal-born Cohen has backed up his gravelly vocals with female voices, this time he wanted the sonorities of the male cantors and choirs he heard in his youth to match his new lyrics, drawn from traditional Jewish liturgy such as the Kaddish and Selichot prayers.

“‘You Want It Darker’ has the word ‘Hineni’ [‘I am here’ — Abraham’s words to God at the binding of Isaac, a motif seen before in Cohen’s work] in it. The first place Leonard heard a cantor sing ‘Hineni’ or ‘Who By Fire,’ or a choir sing ‘Halleluyah,’ was at Shaar Hashomayim,” Zelermyer said.

Cohen’s family has long been involved at the synagogue, and some of its members still attend services there. His grandfather and great-grandfather served as presidents of the congregation, which was established in 1846. Cohen himself had his bar mitzvah ceremony there, and a photo of him with his 1949 Hebrew school class still hangs in the synagogue’s building in Westmount, Quebec. After his father died, Cohen recited Kaddish for him at Shaar Hashomayim.

Zelermyer, an American who studied in Israel and has lived in Montreal for 15 years, told The Times of Israel that he met Cohen in person only once, at Cohen’s uncle’s funeral some years ago.

They did not meet while working on “You Like It Darker,” as Cohen recorded the album in Los Angeles, while Zelermeyer and the Shaar Hashomayim’s choir recorded their part in a Montreal studio under the supervision of Cohen’s son Adam, who served as the project’s producer.

Following Cohen’s request to Zelermyer for a moody, dark atmosphere for the backup vocals for the song, Shaar Shomayim choir director Roi Azoulay and the choristers put together a musical arrangement based on the lead vocals and basic melodic chords provided them by Cohen. Zelermyer offered a dramatic cantorial improvisation, which ended up being placed at the end of the final version of the song.

Zelermyer and the choir also appear on another of the new album’s tracks, “It Seemed the Better Way.” This, too, is a rather dark track, on which the Shaar Hashomayim musical team matched a violin motif to the traditional Priestly Blessing.

“It’s an homage to Leonard’s being a kohen. He often holds his hands out Spock-like to the audience at his concerts,” Zelermyer said, making reference to the Star Trek appropriation of the traditional Jewish benediction.

“You Want It Darker,” in which Cohen addresses God directly, takes him and his listeners to a very dark place. The chorus goes as follows:

If you are the dealer
I’m out of the game
If you are the healer
I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory
Then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame

Zelermyer, who is proud of Shaar Hashomayim’s rich and long musical history and of the way cantorial music can provide spiritual uplift, said he nonetheless completely understood where Cohen is coming from with this title track, and indeed the entire album. The timing of the album’s release in this season is obvious to him.

“We are about to enter the period of the Jewish year with the darkest, most fatalistic liturgy,” said Zelermyer about the High Holidays.

“We all go through dark times. Leonard is facing old age and the end of his career. Perhaps he is having health problems, but I won’t speculate about that. He is realizing that there is more road behind him than there is ahead.”

The cantor also understands Cohen’s sentiments in the song given the current state of the world.

“The song is about God wanting it darker, but it also says that we are responsible for what happens, for killing the flame,” Zelermyer asserted.

There is no talk yet about any further collaboration between Cohen and the cantor, who enjoys stepping off the from the bimah from time to time to record movie soundtracks, and to perform in venues such as the United Nations or with mainstream musical bodies such as Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal.

However, in the meantime, Zelermyer is enjoying the widespread attention this project has generated.

“I’m in Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Maclean’s — it’s amazing. I was just interviewed for the radio. I never expected this would be so big. The song has received a universal positive response,” he said.

Zelermyer believes that with “You Want It Darker,” Cohen, who may have just recorded his final album, is making a clear statement that he is a son of Montreal and of Shaar Hashomayim.

The cantor couldn’t be prouder to have have done his part to amplify the message.

YOU WANT IT DARKER - WE'VE GOT IT SHINING
THINKING ON LEONARD COHEN on his birthday and the eve of Rosh HaShanah 5777.
by Inna Rogatchi
Posted 25/9/2016

On his 82nd birthday, which was September 21st 2016, Leonard Cohen released a single You Want it Darker - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0nmHymgM7Y - the title song of his new album with the same title, and the same message, seemingly.

The song is performed together with cantor Gideon Zelermyer and Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue Choir in Montreal.

The effect of this Leonard’s deed - the song, its release, its performance, its lyrics, the way of performing it - is huge and reverberating.

After this very special single’s release, everyone is picking up the things which are closer to one's heart: music critics are jumping on 'mesmerising' side of the song and performance; Leonard's ever faithful fans embracing it as it is, and cannot help themselves but to think on the recent pass away of Marianne; wide Jewish public is attentive to the strongest possible connection to the core of Jewishness in this addressing to the Creator by the one of his very best sons.

I personally am completely taken by the Leonard's smashing honesty and his immense courage. We know that those are his qualities, but this time, it is not about qualities. It is about the Heart of the Matter. And he did it in the best way imaginable.

As in our famous Rose of Thirteen Petals, a Kabbalah-based concept of complex and inter-depending view of the world and the place of a person in the layers of realities, both Leonard’s honesty and his bravery in the You Want It Darker-deed are far from being one-dimensional. It never is the case for Leonard, anyway, but in the things that straightforward as honesty and courage, more than one dimension is a luxury, and here, with multi-dimensional layers of it created and carried on by Leonard, we have a super-indulgence of human spirit and its strength.

I admire and salute our dearest Leonard for his human bravery, for his intellectual honesty, for his artistic finery and simplicity of the richest kind. I also am overtaken by his courage in bringing utterly innermost things to the stage open to the world – as the only real, exemplary kohen, the member of the priestly family in Jewish tradition, is able to do. And many in this world are learning from our dear Leonard in many things beyond music.

The thinking of his heart is absolutely honest, and it shines in all its darkness now when Leonard has come to the hardest thing to do for anyone; when a person comes – mentally, to start with - to the ultimate edge between the two worlds, this one and the World to Come. We all have our way to deal with it. Or we have not. To make it public - and beautiful - is given to very handful of us, the beacons for the rest of us. It is not just a blessing of the best of our priests. It is the act of courage in all its disarming sincerity. It is ultimate mercy of a big person.

Also, the honesty of the Leonard's quest on the balance while coming to that very thin edge in between the two worlds: "You Want It Darker - We Killed the Lights" is the exemplary of the sharpness of the mind and the honesty of the admission.

The essence of the Judaism doctrine lays in comprehension of human responsibility for our thoughts, intentions and actions. Leonard brings it out on his 82nd birthday with no-nonsense sharpness. But being who he is, with his unique heart, the Master puts the sharp truth into the beauty of the voices of the Jewish choir and his cantor whose music gets the Leonard's words up. And Up.

The Leonard Cohen's 82th birthday song You Want It Darker is a great lesson on Light. After listening your sounding lesson, every word of it, I just want to tell you, dear Friend: You Want It Darker – We’ve Got It Shining.

Thank you, dearest Leonard. You are Our Man for generations to come.

Inna Rogatchi (C). Heart Talk. Homage to Leonard Cohen.
Horizon Beyond Horizon series. Fine Art Photography.
(C) Inna Rogatchi, September 23, 2016.

Goldin wrote:Solomun Remix Of Leonard Cohen's You Want It Darker

http://cohencentric.com/2016/10/05/vide ... nd-palais/

Cantor Gideon Zelermyer on collaborating with Leonard Cohen

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/schedule-for- ... -1.3801764

View Video Of Cantor Gideon Zelermyer Singing His Contribution To Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker Album

http://cohencentric.com/2016/09/21/view ... ker-album/

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/ ... -it-darker

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/the ... ard-cohen/

http://www.macleans.ca/tag/leonard-cohen/


http://forward.com/culture/350519/is-le ... wish-ever/

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Cohen includes the word "crucify" in the song:


http://forward.com/culture/350519/is-le ... wish-ever/

The first line of the second verse continues in this vein: “Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name,” a virtual word-for-word translation of the Kaddish, the hymn of praise to God that appears throughout Jewish liturgy.

Similar to:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... ersion=NIV

“‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name..."