Photo: Jens Schott Knudsen

On his current tour, Leonard Cohen, 74, jogs onstage like a prizefighter, repeatedly drops to his knees as if proposing to his guitarist and skips offstage like a nine-year-old girl headed to recess. He wears a fedora, removing it only to acknowledge his audience’s feverish and nearly constant applause. The hat links the famed songwriter to other old-world-style crooners, such as Ne-Yo; it would not be surprising to learn that it also serves as a default yarmulke for Cohen, an observant Jew and Buddhist. (Somebody’s hedging his bets.) Saturday night’s Radio City Music Hall concert was Cohen’s second New York appearance since financial troubles pulled him out of hibernation. As in his Beacon Theatre show—reviewed in February by Hank Shteamer—the concert revealed a gracious and astoundingly well-preserved performer. Above and after the jump, Cohen is captured for Time Out New York by photographer Jens Schott Knudsen.

In the lobby following the concert, people talked about Cohen in rapturous breath. A woman said, bizarrely, “Every musician played perfectly.” A frat guy confessed to getting choked up. An older man compared the show to religion, which I suppose makes the singer Dylan, or at least God. It’s a stretch: As has been noted, the concert’s arrangements can veer toward the gaudy, pulling from Cohen’s ’80s persona (a thinking man’s Neil Diamond?) more than his folk incarnation. Nevertheless, even if this show was conceived as his Get Out of Hock ’09 tour, Cohen has handled it with characteristic class. He performs for approximately three hours, his voice exacting and robust, his demeanor at once grave and hammy. Musicians often sound muddy at Radio City, overamplified in the big room, but Cohen’s band was soft and pristine. His catalog is awing, obviously. What’s surprising is the focus and conviction of the performer himself, away from the stage for 15 years but lithe and sturdy. His standing ovations were warranted.

Photo: Jens Schott Knudsen

Photo: Jens Schott Knudsen

Photo: Jens Schott Knudsen