Home » Jazz Articles » Live Review » Leonard Cohen at Arena Pula

9

Leonard Cohen at Arena Pula

By

View read count
Leonard Cohen
Arena Pula
Pula, Croatia
August 2, 2013

On a sweltering day, with temperatures rising high above in the red, Canadian singer Leonard Cohen performed with a skill, passion and hunger that ultimately rendered all those restrictive perceptions of age, time or genre utterly redundant. Performing on St. Elijah's day at a Roman amphitheater in Pula—a renowned location for various cultural happenings that include film festivals and A-list concerts—the walls of this two-millennia-old building provided a beautiful backdrop for his poetry and music.

If the evening wasn't hot enough already, Cohen, looking like a gentleman in a fedora, slid into view from behind and delighted fans by running to stage and for the next three hours, belting out a string of his classic hits from a career spanning six decades. It was amazing to see Cohen so fastidiously immersing himself in his performance, singing and playing with sensitivity and commitment, unhinged by that almost unbearable heat and going from song to song as if his life depended on them. Backed by his touring band of many years, he worked his way through a clutch of classics, and the walls of the Arena reverberated from songs that ranged from stone-cold classics such as "Bird on a Wire," "Everybody Knows," "Lover, Lover, Lover," "The Partisan," "Hallelujah," Tower of Song" and "I'm Your Man" to some of his newest songs from the brilliant and deep Old Ideas (Columbia, 2012) such as "Darkness, ""Amen," and "Going Home."

Ultimately, Cohen proved he's still the master of his craft and was in full motion for the full 180-minute set. Occasionally addressing the audience sympathetically, he recognized the efforts that fans display to travel huge distances for his shows and when he told the audience, "Dear friends, I do not know when we'll see each other again. That's why we give our best tonight." After being greeted with a thunderous applause for his keyboard solo on "Tower of Song" he kindly joked with the audience by saying, "You want to flatter me? I hope this is not some sort of compassion for the elderly."



Still, Cohen and his excellent band were exceptional throughout, conveying the sweep of even his most celestial material with a passion and dexterity that was dazzling in its design. He only turned his back to the audience to show admiration for his accomplished musicians. Cohen gave each musician the respect of listening to their performances, standing back and listening to them play. The balance between softness and power blended perfectly, when backing singers Sharon Robinson and the Webb Sisters were balancing Cohen's roughness with warmth on several songs. Further, each of them had a solo spot, when Robinson performed the heartbreakingly beautiful "Alexandra Leaving" and the gentle rendition of "If It Be Your Will" by Charlie and Hattie Webb.

Like singers Bob Dylan or Van Morrison, he has an extraordinarily deep well of songwriting achievement to draw from. There was a blaze of light in every word, and his unwavering energy and charisma was absorbed by the crowd, who repaid him in kind during this awesome set that at moments was transcendental. Not everyone can really captivate an audience and get them to listen to every song for three hours night after night.

Having seen Cohen on two other occasions before with similar set lists, not each concert, including this one, bear any resemblance to each other. Different countries, different settings, different people and different stories behind. But one thing certainly remained the same—from the opening song through to the closing song, Leonard Cohen was always the conductor of mood and conjurer of music magic.

Photo Credit

Goran Šebelić (Cropix)

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

Near

More

Jazz article: Downtown Tacoma Blues And Jazz Festival 2025
Jazz article: Bark Culture At Solar Myth
Jazz article: Hingetown Jazz Festival 2025

Popular

Read Take Five with Pianist Irving Flores
Read SFJAZZ Spring Concerts
Read Jazz em Agosto 2025
Read Bob Schlesinger at Dazzle
Read Sunday Best: A Netflix Documentary
Read Vivian Buczek at Ladies' Jazz Festival

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.