Inside Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at Place des Arts, 2,500 strangers gathered in the concert hall, having just learned separate vocal parts. Directed by Choir! Choir! Choir! founders Daveed Goldman and Nobu Adilman, the crowd prepared to combine their voices into one enormous choir. Rather than striving for absolute vocal perfection, the leaders aimed to create a mass community performance of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
The setting brought a specific resonance to the performance, connecting the song directly to Cohen’s Montreal identity. Hearing thousands of people from his home city sing the track together gave the gathering distinct symbolic weight. The concert took place on 16 September 2024, though the video of the event reached audiences globally upon its upload on 9 October.
Choir! Choir! Choir! operates differently from a conventional permanent choir. Since 2011, Goldman and Adilman have welcomed participants without requiring auditions or previous singing experience. The directors teach the arrangement live in the room and divide the seated audience into distinct harmony sections. This approach turns everyday audience members into active performers and makes a large-scale vocal achievement accessible to anyone who buys a ticket.
Cohen originally released “Hallelujah” on his 1984 album “Various Positions,” and it was not an immediate global success. It grew into a modern standard years later through interpretations by John Cale and Jeff Buckley, along with its prominent placement in the film “Shrek.” One viewer summed up the local connection, calling the group performance “a beautiful tribute to Montreal’s native son Leonard Cohen.” Experience another breathtaking mass vocal rendition of the classic anthem featuring guest singer Rufus Wainwright at Luminato.
The video carried a separate, deeply personal dedication to Daveed Goldman’s late father, Hy. Hy Goldman was a Montreal pediatrician and a dedicated advocate for Yiddish cultural life in the city, helping to establish the KlezKanada Summer Retreat. The dedication added another connection between the communal performance, family memory and Montreal’s broader cultural history.
Large participatory events are central to the group’s ongoing project, including their role in the finale of a 2016 David Bowie tribute at Carnegie Hall, when they led the roughly 2,800-strong audience in “Space Oddity,” which The Music Man readers might remember. As one attendee noted about this Montreal event, “I was there and my sister, her husband and uncle will never forget that evening. It was magical.” Strangers entered as audience members and left having collectively performed one of Montreal’s best-known songs. By the 8 September 2026 metadata snapshot, millions of YouTube views had extended this intensely local act of remembrance into a global event.