Leonard Cohen Memorial Concert + New Video

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Leonard Cohen

An all-star concert in tribute to the late Leonard Cohen is set for Nov. 6 at the Bell Centre in the singer-songwriter’s hometown of Montreal. Called “Tower of Song: A Memorial Tribute to Leonard Cohen,” it will feature (as of now) Sting, Lana Del Rey, Philip Glass, Feist, Elvis Costello, Damien Rice, the Lumineers’ Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites, Patrick Watson and k.d. lang.

Tickets will be available on Sept. 23 here.

The event is being planned and co-produced by Adam Cohen, the musician son of Leonard, who died last Nov. 7. Adam Cohen said, in a statement, “My father left me with a list of instructions before he passed: ‘Put me in a pine box next to my mother and father. Have a small memorial for close friends and family in Los Angeles…and if you want a public event do it in Montreal. I see this concert as a fulfillment of my duties to my father that we gather in Montreal to ring the bells that still can ring.”

Hal WiIlner, a veteran concert and record producer, is serving as the producer for the Montreal event, which will be filmed by Jack Bender for a TV special. Proceeds from the concert will benefit the Canada Council for the Arts, the Council of Arts and Letters of Quebec, and the Montreal Arts Council.

An art exhibit celebrating Cohen, titled “Leonard Cohen—Une brèche en toute chose/A Crack in Everything,” will open Nov. 9 at le Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.

In addition to the above, Sony Music has quietly released a new Leonard Cohen video for “Leaving the Table,” a track from Cohen’s final studio album, You Want It Darker. The song, like much of the album, addresses mortality, with Cohen stating in gambler imagery that he’s “leaving the table, out of the game.”

Watch the video of Leonard Cohen’s “Leaving the Table”