After a sold-out concert at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin back in April 2022, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra will set take the stage at Dublin's 3Arena this September for an even grander event, celebrating the songs of Leonard Cohen with a very special 90th Birthday Celebration Concert.
On Saturday, September 21st, the RTÉ CO and conductor Gavin Maloney will be joined by an array of formidable guest vocalists, including Mick Flannery, Suzanne Savage, Phelim Drew and Jess Kav, for a a night to remember, performing Cohen's words and music on a stage graced by the great man himself - Leonard Cohen's final album release was a Live In Dublin set, recorded at the 3Arena back in 2013.
Ahead of what promises to be a night to remember, we asked acclaimed soprano, jazz vocalist and songwriter Suzanne Savage to pick a quintet of her favourite Cohen songs...
Who By Fire
A simple repeated line in octaves, stepwise; a man and a woman. A song to death: Dark rising questions read like a hypnotic, secular hymn. Based on a melody for the Hebrew prayer 'Unetanneh Tokef', chanted on The Day of Atonement, Leonard asks the ultimate question now in unflinching contemporary prose: Who are you Death, when you come to us?
It even ends, unresolved and mysterious - on the question itself.
I love singing this song, because of it's genius, and how unusual and beautiful a song it is. It’s quite exposed, needing the two voices really in sync to bring it’s simple power across.
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Famous Blue Raincoat
I love this enigmatic song addressed to a love rival, "my brother, my killer."
With the beauty of the melody, the waltz-like chorus which takes you through to the lines " you treated my woman to a flake of your life, when she came home, she was nobody’s wife"... and yet, his humanity, his diplomacy and lyricism shine through until his sign off, "Sincerely, L Cohen".
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Anthem
And what an anthem the chorus is, with its iconic lyric - 'There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in’... A high point within a great song about how to fail, and fail better. That it’s OK to be human, its kinda our thing. Phelim Drew singing this with Ardú Choir and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra full tilt behind him is a revelation.
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You Want It Darker
I love this song. Leonard’s low growl, the pulsing bassline, the male synagogue choir, the glorious darkness of it all. It’s such a cool arrangement, bristling with menace. The lyrics are visceral, " I struggled with some demons they were middle class and tame - I didn’t know I had permission to murder and to maime - You want it darker, we kill the flame." And a soaring cantor line, "Hineni hineni" - "I’m ready, my Lord". On the gig, I get to be the Angel of Death, singing the cantor line, and leading off Tony Flynn, our Leonard on this song.
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Bird On The Wire
I know leaving the genius of Hallelujah and Suzanne out of this list is sacrilege, it’s true - but that’s my own fault, as I’ve grown up hearing the latter sung to me since I was small, and in recent years, I’ve taught Hallelujah a few too many times..
Fact is, it’s impossible to leave them out so let’s include them in here with the beautiful and heart-wrenching Bird On A Wire - a prayer, an anthem, a blues, a late night reverie and poem to the human spirit "But I swear by this song / And by all that I have done wrong / I will make it all up to thee."
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The RTÉ Concert Orchestra Perform The Songs of Leonard Cohen: A 90th Birthday Celebration at 3Arena on Saturday, 21st September - find out more here.
