Minor Fall, Major Lift

A few months ago during a marketing and communications meeting for the ISO, the VP of marketing was recalling the previous night’s performance in which Chris Botti played with the orchestra, and closed the night with an instrumental take on Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. It wasn’t until this discussion that I realized that Leonard Cohen wrote the song. I was only familiar with Jeff Buckley’s fragile and heart-wrenching version. Since it fit Buckley so well, I never questioned whether he wrote it. When you consider yourself a popular music aficionado, as I do, and you discover a jewel that somehow you were not, or only marginally aware of, it’s almost embarrassing. So I did what I assume others like me would do, I scrambled to immerse myself in it so that I can move forward as if I’d known everything about the song all along. Now I’ve heard several other musicians perform it. And I’ve read up on some of the references and imagery. I have even more love and respect for the song, it’s a truly brilliant combination of poetry and music.

It was almost serendipitous that in my period of obsession that ISO’s artists in residence, Time for Three (www.isotf3.org), recorded a fantastically-haunting version on their Three Fervent Travelers LP, and KD Lang sang her powerfully-beautiful version during the opening ceremonies in Vancouver last Friday night. I was in awe. At first I questioned the song’s appropriateness for such an event, but now I see it was perfect. All the elements had to and did come together perfectly; the event, the production, the song, the performer, and it was all staged in front of the thousands on hand and the millions tuning in.

iTunes is a blessing and a curse. I thought about writing KD Lang a fan letter, but I bought two of her albums that night instead. I was blown away by her performance of Hallelujah. Her vocal range opened the song up, made it even bigger than I’d yet heard it, and her stage presence and confidence were beyond inspiring. It left me wondering, do other people feel as strongly as I do, or is it just the coincidence of my overlapping obsession that made my reaction so strong?