Leonard Cohen and Carrie Fisher win posthumous Grammy Awards
Published January 29, 2018
Leonard Cohen performing during the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2009 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif., April 17, 2009. (Paul Butterfield/Getty Images)
(JTA) — After more than a dozen albums and a little more than a year after his death, singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen won his first Grammy.
Cohen Grammy in the category of Best Rock Performance was for the title song from his final album “You Want It Darker,” which was released 19 days before his death. The song includes “Hineni, hineni,” and chants from the choir of Shaar Hashomayim synagogue in Montreal.
A second Jewish performer earned a posthumous Grammy in Sunday night’s award ceremony. Actress Carrie Fisher won the Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for “The Princess Diarist,” the audiobook version of her memoir, released just weeks before her sudden death at the age of 60. Fisher portrayed Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” series.
Singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb won a Grammy in the category of Best Children’s Album for “Feel What U Feel,” her fourth children’s album, which she told Entertainment Weekly she wrote and composed based on “what I’d like to pass along to my kids and kids in general.”
The award-winning movie “La La Land” earned the Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media, created by Jewish composer Justin Hurwitz.
During the awards show, actor and singer Ben Platt, who originated the role of the title character in the Broadway musical “Dear Evan Hansen,” performed “Somewhere” from West Side Story, honoring 21-time Grammy Award winner, composer Leonard Bernstein. The album “Leonard Bernstein – The Composer,” won a Grammy for Best Historical Album.
The Grammys was not without controversy. A pre-recorded skit showed famous musicians reading from the controversial book “Fire and Fury: Inside The Trump White House,” including John Legend, Cher, Snoop Dogg, Cardi B, and DJ Khaled and offering some of their own comments. The video concludes with Hillary Clinton reading an excerpt. “The Grammy’s in the bag,” Clinton says of her performance.
