Leonard Cohen would have celebrated his 90th birthday in September this year. The event was marked by a “Leonard Cohen Birthday Bash” as part of the “Meet Me At The Altar” 2024 music season at Rush Library. Curated by Pat Burke, these performances have been running since July 2022 and have become a fixture in the local calendar with shows on Saturday afternoons from July to December.

Pat conceived this latest idea having seen various Cohen tributes in Dublin and felt that there was ample local talent to stage a similar performance Leonard’s birthday was actually September 21st, but this coincided with the launch of local man Eoghan Fyne’s art exhibition at the library altar space. So, the event was a belated birthday celebration. Eoghan was there himself (a long-standing Cohen fan) and kindly offered to mount a Leonard Cohen framed poster on his (much spattered!) easel as a backdrop to the performance.

Pat kicked off the event himself, performing “Dance me to the end of love”, the opening song for many Leonard Cohen concerts in the later years. This was followed by Ed Byrne who travelled from Kildare just to perform, and he delivered “Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye” and “Who by fire” on his trademark jazz guitar. Louise Emerson gave us an unaccompanied sung version of a Cohen poem titled “Song to make me still”. Then it was back to the songs and Ciarán Saunders sang a lovely stripped-back version of the classic “Hallelujah”.

The O’Donovan clan were there in force; Ritch performed “First we take Manhattan” and brothers Robbie and James gave us “Take this waltz”. In between, we had a tender version of “If it be your will” by Seán De Burca and Laura Bissett. On then to Adrian Leonard, who gave us a brace of songs; “Famous blue raincoat” and “Bird on a wire”. Finally, Tess Doherty ably backed by dad Brian on 12-string guitar, sang a Boygenius cover called “Leonard Cohen”, a quirky and delightful song that only goes to prove Leonard’s enduring popularity and influence on contemporary music. The show came to a rousing end with “So long Marianne” with everyone back on stage and the audience joining in for the chorus.

Meet Me At The Altar is delighted to announce that Chien Buggle will be performing solo in the library on Saturday 30th November, at 3pm. Chien is a member of the Dublin Guitar Quartet, a group formed in 2001 and which specialises in the performance of contemporary classical music, particularly music associated with minimalist composers.