The leader of the choir at Montreal's Shaar Hashomayim synagogue says he was ecstatic at sharing in the late Leonard Cohen's Grammy victory.
Cohen's song 'You Want It Darker', which featured the backing of the Westmount synagogue's choir, won the Grammy for Best Rock Performance at a ceremony on Sunday afternoon, which took place before the televised Grammy show that night.
Cohen's family has had a long association with Shaar Hashomayim — his father and great-grandfather had served as presidents of the synagogue.
Cantor Gideon Zelermyer was present at the ceremony held in a 5,500-seat theatre located within the Madison Square Garden complex.
"I was sort of sitting about, I don't know, three-quarters of the way in the back of the room," Zelarmyer told CJAD 800's Andrew Carter, "and then I heard Jimmy Jam [best known as Janet Jackson's producer, along with Terry Lewis] say 'Leonard Cohen'. And then I sort of screamed like a little girl!"
In 2010, Cohen received a lifetime achievement award from the Grammy academy, but he never won a Grammy for a song or album while he was alive.
Zelermyer says that made the moment a bittersweet one for him.
"It's an amazing, loving, beautiful tribute to an amazing life in music and to think that it's such a bittersweet closure that the first solo acknowledgement of an artistic statement of his by the Academy and at the same time he's not around to enjoy it," Zalermyer says. "But it's a tremendous honor to his legacy, and certainly, for our city."
Cohen died on Nov. 7, 2016, almost three weeks after his final album, You Want It Darker, was released.