Will she cry, or won’t she? Will she cry, or won’t she?

That was the third-person sentence running 'round and 'round my head, referencing myself, as I made my way through the hefty crowd of Leonard Cohen fans who’d come to see the grandmaster of songwriting play Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center this past Monday, October 19. [All photos by Sam Goresh.]

I tend to get sentimental when it comes to music anyway, and my husband had just left town for a month-long journey across America to shoot his Routes Music documentary, so I was feeling rather blue. This was one of the few concerts I’d attended without my other half since we met more than eight years ago, and considering that he was the one who turned me onto Leonard, I wasn’t sure how the music would hit me.

But the longtime troubadour allowed me no opportunity to dwell on my loneliness and managed to lift me up from the gloom in my heart, even making me laugh at various points in the evening.

Debonair as always in his grey pinstripe suit and matching fedora, the 75-year-old held the audience mesmerized with his deep breathy baritone and occasional witty stage banter. He sang against his rootsy, jazz-flavored, gospel-tinged folk rock with his hand alternately cupped around his face or around his mic, at times bending into a crouch to deliver his lyrics from the floor with his trademark self-possessed passion.

This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2009.