Hallelujah! Leonard Cohen gives Glenn Gould Prize money to Canada Council

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      Singer-songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen has donated a $50,000 award to the Canada Council for the Arts.

      Tonight at a gala in Toronto honouring him as the ninth laureate of the Glenn Gould Prize, Cohen presented the donation to the council's chair, Joseph L. Rotman, earning a huge applause from the crowd at Toronto's Massey Hall.

      Cohen thanked the Glenn Gould Foundation, saying "I'm deeply grateful for this recognition."

      The musician wasn't always this flush. Six years ago, Cohen appeared on the cover of Maclean's alongside the headline 'Devastated". It referred to him being broke and caught in a "sordid tale of extortion, SWAT teams, tantric sex, forcible confinement, and betrayal".

      That same year, his former business manager, Kelley Lynch, was ordered by a U.S. court to pay him US$9.5 million after he accused her of ripping him off for more than a decade.

      Cohen then managed to turn his life around in one of the most remarkable comebacks in Canadian music history. And last month, Lynch was convicted of harassing him by sending him thousands of messages in violation of a court order.

      Meanwhile in Vancouver, Cohen's lyrics were celebrated on stage earlier this year in The Chelsea Hotel, which was performed at the Firehall Theatre in February and March.

      Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.

      Comments

      1 Comments

      blueheron

      May 14, 2012 at 8:19pm

      Leonard Cohen is a national treasure. His song, "The Future," must have been written with today's bleak and jarring world news in mind. Other Cohen songs that draw me in are "The Story of Isaac," "First We Take Manhatten," "Famous Blue Raincoat" and, of course, "Hallelujah."

      The man is a bona fide genius.