An Evening with
Leonard Cohen
Starting in 2017, Maja Posavec and jazz guitarist Ivan Kapec have been continuously performing concerts dedicated exclusively to the works of Leonard Cohen. The concert is an intimate, poetic evening in which Cohen’s verses are sung and spoken. This program has generated great audience interest, as evidenced by numerous sold-out concerts across Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. They have released an album of the same name, which topped the charts of best-selling albums for several weeks. Their work has received praise from both critics and audiences, who repeatedly return to this concert experience.
During the first three years, the concert was performed mainly as a duo, and it now continues in a quartet format featuring some of Croatia’s finest jazz musicians: Borko Rupena on drums, Jurica Štelma on double bass, Mario Bočić on saxophone, and Ivan Kapec on baritone guitar.
The initial idea was for it to be a meditative evening of poetry. When the rehearsals started, it was evident that artists were not intending only to cover Cohen but to look for a personal interpretation. It was spontaneous as Maja Posavec and the guitarist Ivan Kapec are both lovers of poetry, they were given a lot of opportunities by Cohen to express themselves. The audience responded with delight to their interpretations and followed them. A field of trust was created in which they could exchange their sorrows, pains, passions, and joys, all through the duo’s favorite Cohen songs. Very quickly, the idea was born to record the material, which was done in 2019. he sound with the quartet opened a new dimension of this concert, a unique sound was born, and the band continued on.
PICTURE GALLERY
ALBUM
An Evening with Leonardom Cohenom
REVIEWS
“Finally, another testimony to the longevity and relevance of Cohen’s songs is represented by this unique album, which, in addition to Leonard, is signed by two prominent Croatian musicians, the versatile jazz and fusion guitarist Ivan Kapec and the young singer-songwriter with a distinctive and suggestive voice, Maja Posavec. But let us remind you we are talking about musicians who were not even born at the time of the release of Cohen’s first album ‘Songs of Leonard Cohen’ (1967)! This in itself, perhaps more than anything else, testifies to the exceptional sensitivity and skill of these musicians of ours who, regardless of time and geographical displacement and despite the stylistic diversity of Cohen’s oeuvre (which finds its origins in North American folk, French chanson, and Andalusian flamenco) managed to penetrate deeply into the core of Cohen’s canon.“
Damir Šodan, text accompanying the CD releaseof the album ‘Večer s Leonardom Cohenom’ (An Evening with Leonard Cohen)
All human doubts, insecurities, and indomitability translated into a walk along the edge and inside, in the depths of this evening that was for us and herself donated by Maja Posavec The guitar, Ivan Kapec, bass, drums, and saxophone accompanied her on that path, which is at the same time the “beaten” path (the set list is made up of songs that even a non-expert in the Canadian songbook would recognize) and a wide field open to new and old own reading of these beautiful lyrics and beautiful, often painful music. Željko Mirković, Music box Maja Posavec once again showed a perfect understanding of Leonard Cohen’s work, with gestures, Cohen’s original poetic intrusions, careful selection of the order of the songs in this dedication, and of course also great vocal improvisations and reinterpretations, which were marked by a completely different male vocal in the original performances of those anthology songs.
Željko Mirković, Music box
All human doubts, insecurities, and indomitability translated into a walk along the edge and inside, in the depths of this evening that was for us and herself donated by Maja Posavec The guitar, Ivan Kapec, bass, drums, and saxophone accompanied her on that path, which is at the same time the “beaten” path (the set list is made up of songs that even a non-expert in the Canadian songbook would recognize) and a wide field open to new and old own reading of these beautiful lyrics and beautiful, often painful music. Željko Mirković, Music box Maja Posavec once again showed a perfect understanding of Leonard Cohen’s work, with gestures, Cohen’s original poetic intrusions, careful selection of the order of the songs in this dedication, and of course also great vocal improvisations and reinterpretations, which were marked by a completely different male vocal in the original performances of those anthology songs.
Alen Mikec, Third World
PERFORMANCES
Photography by: Leonardo Braović