Poetry, Conspiracies, and much great music at SF Leonard Cohen Festival

Filling the Swedish American Hall for all three nights November 8-10, the fifth San Francisco Leonard Cohen Festival honored the great Canadian singer and writer’s legacy, and explored how his work resonates in contemporary poetry and music. While not an articulated aim of the show, opening night offered the added benefit of providing group solace for many audience members still reeling from the outcome of the presidential election.

Night 1

Event curator Clay Eugene Smith opened the evening by explaining the two goals of the festival: to remind ourselves of the emotional depth of Cohen’s work (his comedy, questioning, searching for answers) and to “bend” Cohen by expanding, reinterpreting, connecting, and reimagining his works, motifs, and themes.

Emcee Bobby Coleman shepherded the audience through the evening’s artists with introductions, anecdotes, and a pointed quote from Walt Whitman’s Preface to Leaves of Grass: “Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall.” 

Smith’s curation intertwined music and poetry. Ruby Lee Hill with Joan Rueter performed “Passing Through” – the theme of night one. Other musical acts included Middle Harbor Songbirds (Brendan Schwarz and Joshua James Jackson) who brought “One of Us Cannot Be Wrong.”  Slow Yoda (Josh “Yosh” Warren, Sloan Looney, and Deron Cavaletti) contributed “Stories of the Street.” Tribute choir Conspiracy of Venus presented Joni Mitchell’s “Case of You” and Cohen’s “A Thousand Kisses Deep,” and “I’m Your Man.”

Maybe it was the searching mood, but the poets really resonated on night one. Tess Taylor sang “Sisters of Mercy” a capella before reading “short surreal odes” by Cohen favorite Federico Garcia Lorca and her own odes —one of which describes “pain… a volatile molecule.” Genny Lim deftly interwove her poetry with an a capella version of “Suzanne” ending with an audience sing along of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.”

Gregory Pond explored the motif of brokenness in Cohen and Jack Hirschman, as well as the motif of romantic love in his own work. Pond shared the lyrics to Cohen’s song “Democracy” reminding us that “Democracy is coming to the USA.” He followed with his own playfully punching work about what America aspires to, but hasn’t accomplished, by personifying the country as “Ameri.”

Alejandro Murguia added to the political commentary of the night when he said that Cohen’s beloved Lorca was killed by the Spanish fascists and left in a mass grave because he was “progressive, socialist, queer, a poet.”

Sharing his poem “El Sueño de Lorca” (partly in Spanish, partly in English), he recited that  “in [Lorca’s] eye sockets/jasmines have bloomed/and every petal a poem.” Even destruction and death lead to change and growth. Even more pointed were Murguia’s comments about the plights of Leonard Peltier, Alex Nieto, and others highlighted that some communities have been suffering a long time as an introduction to “El Mundo Al Revés.”

To end the night, Clay brought Ruby Lee Hill, Joan Rueter, Brendan Schwarz and Joshua James Jackson back on stage for a sing-along version of “Passing Through” so that we might spill into the streets feeling a sense of community in addition to the tumult of emotions our times have wrought.

Night 2

With a dramatic opening for night two, Conspiracy Of Beards filed into the aisles of a darkened venue filling the room with a chant version of “Hallelujah” interwoven with a spoken word version of “The Guests.” Aptly remarking, “One by one, the guests arrive…/The open-hearted many/The broken-hearted few/And no one knows where the night is going/I need you now…”

ISMAY then started their set with “Famous Blue Raincoat.” Singer Avery Hellman is a self-professed Cohen fan who “obsessively” reads about Cohen. Bringing their knowledge of the stories and mythologies around the song origins – “One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong” purportedly written after Cohen failed to seduce Nico, and meanings – “Who By Fire” inspired by Cohen’s grandfather reading the Torah about the Book Of Life. Describing Cohen’s cowboy past with his first band The Buckskin Boys, ISMAY reimagined  “Bird On A Wire” as a country song joined by Graham Patzner on fiddle. Helllman’s delicate finger picking and gentle voice purposefully gave way to soaring crescendos to punctuation key lines. Andy Allen-Fahlander played guitar and mandolin and Owen Clapp played upright bass for this delightfully curated set which closed with “Suzanne.”

In their suits, hats, and ties, the Beards blanketed the stage and opened with “Everybody Knows” employing a strategic pregnant pause: “everybody knows….the good guys lost.” Director Daryl Henline commented on how Cohen’s layered lyrics work many levels before their rendition of  “Anthem.” The Beards used their voices to embody both the despair and hope Cohen explores, for “There is a crack, a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.” Mark Christiansen contributed a fun new doo-wap version of “Ain’t No Cure For Love.” While the Beards are primarily an a capella group, in the spirit of “bending” Leonard Cohen, they, too, bent their choral approach by adding musical accompaniment on “Democracy” and “Dance Me To the End Of Love” with Tim White on bass clarinet, Andrew Kushin playing upright bass, Scott Jacobson on upright bass, and Graham Patzner again on violin.

A highlight of the night was Amy Tobin joining the Beards for “The Window.” Hats off, the Beards gently moved to the back of the stage to sing supporting vocals and allow literal and metaphoric space for Tobin’s exuberant, rousing rendition.

Tobin and the musicians joined the Beards for what was to be the last song of the night, “Dance Me To the End Of Love.” At the end of the song a feeling of desire hung in the air. No one wanted the evening to end, so Henline offered the observation that while many find Cohen’s songs depressing, he sees “hope all over” Cohen’s works and offered to end the evening with one more hopeful song: “Tonight Will Be Fine.” We left with the parting message “That tonight will be fine/ …for a while.”

Night 3

The final event of the festival was a reflective evening with Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and producer Sharon Robinson. Robinson’s silky voice regaled the audience with songs and stories of her almost 40 years as a collaborator and friend of Cohen. Offering insight into their collaboration process, Robinson noted that most songs started with poems that took Cohen years to write as she wrote music to support Cohen’s vision of the song.

Seeing the emails, which today almost seem quaint, between Robinson and Cohen felt intimate as did her descriptions of Cohen’s Los Angeles home: ethereal, minimalist, modest, quiet, old pine table by the window, religious texts, books. Her stories about Cohen–the man who made a great tuna sandwich and loved Bob’s Big Boy restaurant, the godfather to her son who bought him a cocktail book for his 16th birthday–gave glimpses into the life of the person behind the mystical songs.

Among so many delightful stories, I was struck by those about Cohen in the later parts of his life: The “grand tour” of 400 shows which started because Cohen needed money after being defrauded, according to Robinson, led to a sense of fulfillment that had previously eluded him. His ability to embrace his  inevitable death—still with a sense of humor. Before going on a tour of her own, Robinson visited Cohen who wished her well and told her if he wasn’t there when she returned, she should “try an ouija board.” Robinson shared a portrait of Cohen whose sharp wit appreciated both the mundane and sublime in daily life.

Gratitude permeated the festival. The organizers again and again thanked the sponsors, the artists, and the audience who responded in kind with applause and ovations. The Fifth San Francisco Leonard Cohen Festival represents what so many of us love about the Bay Area—a small passion project bringing like minded people together to inspire, collaborate, and connect. Kudos to Clay Eugene Smith for a beautifully curated event!

—Patty Riek