Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen, one of the most fascinating and enigmatic singer/songwriters of the late '60s, has retained an audience across four decades of music-making interrupted by various digressions into personal and creative exploration, all of which have only added to the mystique surrounding him.

He was born Leonard Norman Cohen into a middle-class Jewish family in the Montreal suburb of Westmount. He learned to play the guitar at age 13 and began performing country songs at local cafes as a teenager. At 17, he enrolled in McGill University as an English major and began writing poetry. In 1956, just a year after his graduation, Leonard published his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies, which received great reviews and marked the beginning of his career as a writer. Leonard's second book of poetry, The Spice Box of Earth, published in 1961, became an international success both critically and commercially. Now established as a major literary figure Leonard went on to publish several more collections of poetry, as well as two novels, before even beginning his musical career. It was sometime in the mid-60s when Leonard began composing songs, a natural extension from his poetry. He settled in Nashville for a short time where he was introduced to folksinger Judy Collins. Judy included the Leonard-penned, "Suzanne" and "Dress Rehearsal Rag" on her 1966 album In My Life. "Suzanne" received a considerable amount of radio airplay and it was Judy who eventually persuaded Leonard to return to performing for the first time since his teens. Leonard made his debut during the summer of 1967 at the Newport Folk Festival, followed by a pair of sold-out concerts in New York City. Leonard was quickly signed to Columbia Records, creating The Songs of Leonard Cohen, released just before Christmas of 1967. The album was an immediate hit by the standards of the folk music world and the budding singer/songwriter community. Amid all of this sudden musical activity, he hardly neglected his other writing - in 1968, Cohen released a new volume, Selected Poems: 1956-1968, which included both old and newly published work, and earned him the Governor-General's Award, Canada's highest literary honor.

Leonard's next album, Songs from a Room, was released in 1969. The album included a pair of tracks, "Bird On A Wire" and "The Story Of Isaac," that became standards rivaling "Suzanne" in popularity. Songs of Love and Hate, released in 1971 included the acclaimed songs "Joan of Arc," "Dress Rehearsal Rag", and "Famous Blue Raincoat", and earned Leonard a large international cult following. He also found himself in demand in the world of commercial filmmaking, as director Robert Altman used his music in his 1971 feature film McCabe and Mrs. Miller, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. The following year, he published a new poetry collection, The Energy of Slaves. In 1973, Leonard's music became the basis for a theatrical production called Sisters of Mercy, conceived by Gene Lesser and loosely based on Cohen's life, or at least a fantasy version of his life.

Throughout the following decades Leonard remained a prominent musical and literary figure. By the late 80s he had published a steady flow of literature and released 9 more albums, including Various Positions, recorded in 1984 with Jennifer Warnes, and I'm Your Man, released in 1988. He had also worked on projects in other creative realms, including an award-winning short film that he wrote, directed, and scored, entitled I Am a Hotel, and the score for the 1985 conceptual film Night Magic, which earned a Juno Award in Canada for Best Movie Score. By the 1990s Leonard was back on center stage with a new album, The Future, released in 1992 as well as several tribute albums, I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen released in 1991 and Tower of Song, released in 1993. In the midst of all of the activity surrounding his writing and compositions, Leonard embarked on a new phase of his life. He came to spend time at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center, a Buddhist retreat in California, and eventually became a full-time resident, becoming a Buddhist monk during the late '90s. When he re-emerged in 1999, Leonard had many dozens of new compositions in hand, songs and poems alike resulting in the 2001 release, Ten New Songs. In 2004, the year he turned 70, Leonard released, Dear Heather, one of his most personal albums. It revealed his voice anew, as a deep baritone more limited in range than on any previous recording, but it overcame this change in vocal timbre by facing it head-on, just as Leonard had done with his singing throughout his career - it also contained a number of songs for which Leonard wrote music but not lyrics, a decided change of pace for a man who'd started out as a poet.

Four decades after he emerged as a public literary figure and then a performer, Leonard remains one of the very few musical figures of that era who commands as much respect and attention, and probably as large an audience, in the 21st century as he did in the 1960s. As much as any survivor of that decade, Leonard has held onto his original audience and has seen it grow across generations, in keeping with a body of music that is truly timeless and ageless.