No one puts on a better tribute concert than Hal Willner,...a sympathetic and generous listener with an almost preternatural ability to match performer to song, and a Rolodex to back it up...
-Variety

With

Anjani, Antony, Laurie Anderson, Perla Batalla, Steven Bernstein, Rob Burger, Charlie Burnham, Nick Cave, Julie Christensen, Jarvis Cocker, Zoë Conway, David Coulter, Don Falzone, Gavin Friday, The Handsome Family, Robin Holcomb, Briggan Krauss, Maxim Moston, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Beth Orton, Lou Reed, Chris Spedding, Kate St. John, Teddy Thompson, and Kenny Wollesen

"I can't exactly remember how Leonard Cohen's music crept into my psyche over the last few decades; I was aware of him while growing up, but it was like a food that you spit out as a kid; you'd taste it again every few years, and eventually it became your favorite thing to eat. His music has a depth of emotion, passion, and humor that is entirely his own. It is a singular world much like the recordings of Ornette Coleman. It ain't background music! To those who "get it," it's kind of a religion. Since I "got it," a week doesn't go by without me putting on one of his recordings and stopping whatever it is that I'm doing to be in that world. I can't imagine a more perfect body of work to draw from for the type of concept projects that I've been fortunate enough to put together over the last twenty-two years.

For those who have not encountered one of these projects on record or live (which would be most of you), in the past they have explored the work of composers and writers including Nino Rota, Thelonious Monk, Edgar Allen Poe, Kurt Weill, Tim Buckley, Charles Mingus, and Harold Arlen. Leonard Cohen is the very first composer in the "series" who is still with us and active in his work. It is really hard to narrow down the concert's song selection from the one hundred and one original compositions that Leonard has recorded (I think that's the right number). But I hope the program will have a good balance of songs from all of Leonard's records and the right mix of his well-known songs and obscure ones."

• Hal Willner, May 2004

Produced by Pomegranate Arts and THE OFFICE performing arts + film

"Came So Far For Beauty" was originally commissioned in 2003 by the Celebrate Brooklyn Performing Arts Festival with support from the Canadian Consulate General New York.