There Once Was A Man

On Sunday night, Art of Time Ensemble was streaming a show it originally recorded in 2018 called A Singer Must Die. It was a tribute show to Leonard Cohen by this pop-classical outfit with guest singers including Steven Page, Sarah Harmer, and Sarah Slean. Cohen isn't my favourite singer-songwriter but I thought it might be worth checking out for (another) stay-at-home evening.

I spent most of show with it playing in the background as I finished a crossword. Simply put: I've always thought Cohen (and Dylan) wrote doggerel with leaden rhythm and dull rhymes. On the music side, the songs lacked great melodies or inspiration. And nothing played tonight changed my mind though I have enjoyed Art of Time in the past.

The ensemble did all the heavy lifting. The songs were re-arranged as numbers from klezmer to tango jazz to blues and other genres. There were interesting counter-plays between instruments. But you knew none of this originated from the source material. The singers also poured their emotions into their performance though there was something about Page's vocal timbre that didn't mesh with this content. Mostly though, in my opinion, Cohen's lyrics are good for about 1 verse and a chorus. But of course they're never that short and then you can't help but notice how insipid they are.

So there were occasional 60-second spans where I focused on the performance (after watching attentively for the first 10 minutes) before it was relegated once again to easy-listening muzak. The crossword was fun though.