New York’s Lincoln Center on Wednesday announced a low-key memorial for legendary poet and singer Leonard Cohen next week, with the art complex deciding to just play his songs.
Lincoln Center — the campus of premier US art institutions including the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic — said the remembrance event will take place on Monday.
Recordings of Cohen’s music, as selected by his fans and friends, will play for four hours starting at noon (1700 GMT) at Lincoln Center’s outdoor plaza regardless of weather.
“There are no speakers and no live performances,” Lincoln Center said in a statement.
The event is being put together by Hal Willner, a veteran music producer behind a 2005 tribute show for Cohen in Sydney that gave birth to the documentary film Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man.
The remembrance event follows the model of a 2013 memorial for another rock great and friend of Cohen, Lou Reed, whose music was played on speakers outside of Lincoln Center without commentary.
Cohen, a poet and novelist who explored the meaning of love and spirituality on songs such as the frequently covered Hallelujah, died on November 7 in Los Angeles.
His family has not announced plans for any public event and buried him quietly next to his parents in his native Montreal.
Since his death, fans have created makeshift memorials outside his home in Montreal as well as at New York’s famously bohemian Chelsea Hotel, where Cohen had lived and which he immortalised in a song about a romantic tryst.
