Leonard Cohen
Ninth Laureate of the Glenn Gould Prize
Transcending national boundaries and cultures with his poetry and music.
Biography
For four decades, Leonard Cohen has been one of the most important and influential songwriters of our time, relentlessly examining the central issues in human experience, and reporting with passion, insight and wisdom. His body of work is a reflection of the zeitgeist of the late 20th century and beyond.
His songs are works of great poetic depth and profound emotional force, and set new standards for quality, range and seriousness in pop music. Artists and music-lovers alike are drawn to the dignity, ambition and sheer power of his songs.
An accomplished literary figure before he began recording music in the late 1960s, his collections of poetry, including Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956) and Flowers for Hitler, and his novels including The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966), had already brought him considerable recognition.
His dual careers in music and literature have continued feeding each other over the decades – his songs revealing a literary richness rare in the world of popular music, and his poetry and prose informed by an intense musicality. Numerous documentaries, awards, and tribute albums acknowledge the far-reaching contribution Cohen has made to music.
I want to thank The Glenn Gould Foundation for their kindness. It is a great honour, sweetened by my love of the work of Glenn Gould, and our collective appreciation of his invigorating and enduring presence in the world of Music and Imagination.
— Leonard Cohen
Related
Leonard Cohen, 1934 – 2016
Make This Waltz
The protégé
Selected by Ninth Prize Laureate Leonard Cohen, Sistema Toronto was established in 2011 and is an intensive after-school program of free music education focusing on economically disadvantaged communities. It is modelled after El Sistema, the visionary movement founded by Venezuelan economist, musician and humanitarian Dr. José Antonio Abreu, who received the Eighth Glenn Gould Prize in 2009.
Inspired by the 2009 Glenn Gould Prize Celebration of Music for Dr. Abreu, Toronto businessman and philanthropist Robert Eisenberg (now President of Sistema Toronto) engaged musician and educator David Visentin (now Executive and Artistic Director) to bring the Sistema concept to Toronto schools, founding their initial pilot project with 60 children from grades one to four within a vibrant community of diverse cultural backgrounds at Parkdale Junior and Senior Public school, as a first step towards the long-term goal of making the program broadly available throughout the city and beyond.
Sistema Toronto provides music lessons four days a week, instruments and a healthy after-school snack all at no charge. Lessons take place in an ensemble-based environment from September to June, all led by a professional team of artist-teachers. The intensive nature of the program (10 hours of lessons weekly), means that in three years, a Sistema student will receive the equivalent of 10 years of traditional conservatory training.
Sistema Toronto emphasizes both musical and human harmony, working towards positive social transformation through music. The program shares among its participants a love of music as a tool for the unique development of each child’s full potential. Working as members of an ensemble team, Sistema children experience the joy and fulfillment not only of growing skill, the pleasure of experiencing and creating beauty, but also what it means to be part of a supportive community in which he or she contributes as a fully engaged contributor.
The Ninth Prize Jury
Dadawa
China
In 1995, Zhu Zheqin fused the Tibetan word for moon (Dawa) with surrealist-Dadaism (Dada) to create a new name, “Dadawa” as her international moniker. Her influence as well as the warm reception of Dadawa’s music by World Music fans is evidence of her artistic ideal come true: music without borders.
Known in the west as Dadawa and as Zhu Zheqin to hundreds of millions of Chinese fans, she has been called Asia’s Enya for her soaring voice, as Asia’s Bjork for her cutting edge artistry and Asia’s Ry Cooder for her exploration of world musical culture. As a singer and producer, she is the first contemporary Chinese diva to achieve worldwide stardom. Whether performing at Carnegie Hall with The Chieftains or in her native China with Jesse Cook, Dadawa is an artist who crosses boundaries, both artistic and geographic. In 2010, Dadawa was awarded the Chinese Culture Promoter Award and became the UNDP National Goodwill Ambassador in 2009.
Atom Egoyan
Canada
With fourteen feature films and related projects, Atom Egoyan has won numerous awards including five prizes at the Cannes Film Festival (including the Grand Prix, International Critics Awards and Ecumenical Jury Prizes), two Academy Award nominations, eight Genie Awards, prizes from the National Board of Review and an award for Best International Adaptation at The Frankfurt Book Fair.
Egoyan has been President of the Jury in Cannes (Cinéfondation and Shorts), Berlin (Main Competition) and Venice (First Feature), as well as a jury member at several other festivals, including Sundance and Toronto.
Stephen Fry
United Kingdom
Stephen Fry was born in 1957 and educated at an unfeasibly large number of educational establishments, most of which rapidly tired of him. At Cambridge University, he met and worked with, among others, Emma Thompson and Hugh Laurie, a life long friend and comedy partner.
He hosts the BBC quiz show QI (5 series), has completed two series of Absolute Power with John Bird for the BBC and appeared in numerous single dramas for television.
His numerous film appearances have included award-winning performances in Peter’s Friends, Wilde, Gosford Park, V for Vendetta and most recently Eichmann.
He has written four best-selling novels, an autobiographical series starting with Moab is My Washpot, and more recently, The Fry Chronicles, a book on poetry form, The Ode Less Travelled, and is well-known among a younger generation as the reader of the audiobook versions of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels.
Gary Graffman
United States
Gary Graffman has been a major figure in the music world since his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of eighteen. For the next three decades he toured almost constantly, playing the most demanding works in the piano literature. His numerous recordings with the orchestras of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland and Chicago under such conductors as Bernstein, Ormandy, Szell and Mehta include concertos by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Brahms, Chopin and Beethoven; they are still regarded as touchtones.
In 1979, an injury to his right hand limited Mr. Graffman’s concertizing to the small body of music written for the left hand alone, and he joined the faculty of Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. In 1986—exactly fifty years after entering Curtis as a seven-year-old student, Mr. Graffman was appointed director of that renowned all-scholarship conservatory, also serving as its president from 1995 to 2006. Now retired from administrative duties, Mr. Graffman remains on the Curtis faculty while continuing his active concert career as a one-handed pianist.
Phoebe Greenberg
Canada
Phoebe Greenberg’s career, both as an artist and a business professional, has been dedicated to culture. Her roots are in the theatre: she is a graduate from L’école internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq. After many years abroad, she returned to Montreal in 1990 to found Diving Horse Creations, a theatre company dedicated to the theatre of the bouffon and theatre of the absurd. The company produced plays by Eugene Ionesco, Michel de Ghelderode, and Daniil Harms. In the fall of 2007, DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art opened its doors in Montreal with an exhibition by the British artist Marc Quinn. Phoebe devotes much of her time to bringing some of the most compelling art of our time to DHC/ART, including the work of Sophie Calle, Nancy Davenport, Michal Rovner, Jenny Holzer, Christian Marclay and David Altmejd. Her company PHI, a spin-off from the original theatre company, has become a laboratory for cultural research in the fields of music, film, new media, and architecture, and employs thirty artists and thinkers. Phoebe is founder and director of both DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art and PHI Group. Phoebe is also Associate Producer on Denis Villeneuve’s 2011 Academy Award® nominated feature film Incendies, directed by Denis Villeneuve.
Elaine Overholt
Canada
Elaine Overholt has established herself as one of North America’s most respected and treasured singers, voice coaches and vocal producers. Her diverse musical training in classical piano, classical voice, gospel, theatre, and rock music led her to a deep understanding of all styles of singing.
An extensive performing career has allowed her the opportunity to work with titans of music; Ray Charles, Tina Turner, opera star Richard Margison, Dionne Warwick, Anne Murray and Chubby Checker amongst them. Ms. Overholt has performed as a soloist on world stages, major network television, albums, films, thousands of jingles and has recorded two albums with a number three single on Billboard.
As a Broadway coach Elaine trained the singers in the lead roles of Broadway hits ‘Hairspray‘, ‘The Producers’ and ‘Mamma Mia’.
Costa Pilavachi
Uniteed Kingdom / Greece /
Canada
Pilavachi has worked with some of the greatest artists of our time, including Alfred Brendel, Bernard Haitink, Sir Colin Davis, Jessye Norman, Mitsuko Uchida, Valery Gergiev, Luciano Pavarotti, Renee Fleming, Cecilia Bartoli, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and many more. Among the many artists he signed to labels are Gergiev, tenors Juan Diego Florez and Joseph Calleja, violinist Janine Jansen, pianist Nelson Freire and the phenomenally successful “crossover” tenor Andrea Bocelli.
In 2006 Pilavachi left Universal and became President of EMI’s classical division during an especially turbulent time for this renowned British firm. He left in 2009 and in 2010 returned to Universal in a newly-created corporate role as Senior Vice-President Classical Artist and Repertoire, overseeing the artistic direction of the Deutsche Grammophon and Decca labels worldwide.
Paul Hoffert
Canada
Paul Hoffert is Chair of the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, Fine Arts Professor at York University, and Chair of the Guild of Canadian Film Composers. He is former President of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, Faculty Fellow at Harvard University Law School, and Chair of the Ontario Arts Council.
He has authored best-selling books: “The New Client”, “All Together Now”, and “The Bagel Effect” as well as a textbook on composing music for video games. In 2001, Hoffert received the Pixel award as the new media industry’s “Visionary of the Year” and in 2005 he received the Order of Canada.