Photos: Juan Martín and Bob Jensen Release Leonard Cohen's Suzanne

Leonard Cohen wrote 'Suzanne' in Montreal, the city Bob Jensen now calls home. Out now, Jensen, a musician, author and spoken word poet, joins Spanish flamenco legend Juan Martín for a new take on the song, uniting the sound of Andalucía with the poetry of Canada.

It's a pairing that spans oceans and generations. Martín's guitar was recorded by Antonio Nava in Cádiz, Spain, while Jensen cut his vocals with Colin Buchanan at The Pink Palace in Charlottetown, PEI. Maria Dunn adds backing vocals, Bill Garrett mixed the track, and Don Ross mastered it at Goby Fish Digital Aquarium in Windsor, Nova Scotia. Martín and Jensen produced it together, and Annie Gallup created the cover art.

For Jensen, this song is sacred ground. 'I've been listening to Cohen since I was a kid,' he says, 'And as much as I love him, I dislike the great majority of the Cohen covers I have heard.'

So the pair set out to do something different. 'Juan and I agreed that we wanted to pay homage to the song and the artist, but also to put our own stamp on it. Otherwise, what would the purpose be?'

And there's no song he holds higher. 'In a lifetime of listening to singer-songwriters, Suzanne is the only song I have ever heard that I consider to be perfect. It is a prayer, it is an ode, a love song, it is incense drifting up to heaven. I am very grateful to be working with an artist of Juan's calibre on this greatest of all songs.'

Martín's credentials are staggering. Born in Málaga, he started learning guitar at six and moved to Madrid in his early twenties to study under Niño Ricardo and Paco de Lucía. At 17, he appeared in the film 'Donde tu estés,' shot in the Málaga area. Guitar Player magazine has voted him one of the top three guitarists in the world multiple times, and The Guardian has called him 'the leading flamenco guitarist of his generation.'

He played at Picasso's 90th birthday celebration at the artist's invitation, which inspired his album 'Picasso Portraits.' His music became part of the 'Guernica' exhibition at London's Whitechapel Gallery, and in 2018 he performed in front of the gouache on cardboard of 'Guernica' at Innsbruck's Summer Palace, the work created for the tapestry that now hangs at the United Nations.

His list of collaborators reads like music history: Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Rory Gallagher, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Nash Ensemble, L'Orchestre de la Loire at the Montreux Festival and film composer Mark Isham. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, the Sydney Opera House, the Wigmore Hall, the Barbican, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Kings Place, along with festivals in Edinburgh, Ludwigsburg, Montreux, Istanbul and Hong Kong.

Across 20 albums, mostly of his own compositions, Martín has recorded 'Serenade' with the Royal Philharmonic, 'Painter in Sound' and 'Through the Moving Window' with Isham, the solo works 'The Andalucian Suites,' 'Luna Negra' and 'Solo,' and 'Musica Alhambra,' which revives Andalusí and Sephardic music from the 12th and 13th centuries. His live flamenco album 'Live en Directo' earned a critics' award in Spain, and his composition 'Evocacion' has millions of views on YouTube. Critics have compared him to Tárrega and Turina, and Swiss paper Bernernachrichten crowned him 'The Chopin of the Flamenco Guitar.'

He's also a master teacher. His book 'El Arte Flamenco de la Guitarra,' known as the bible of flamenco, was the first flamenco tutor book to enter music academies worldwide, and he has published four more books with DVDs through Mel Bay and another book and DVD set with Faber. Today he divides his time between Málaga and London, where he runs Flamencovision, an international company presenting flamenco straight from Andalucía.

Jensen's journey has been just as remarkable, if a little more winding. Born in Northern New Brunswick in 1959, he released his first album, 'First Time Since August,' in his early twenties and worked as a folk musician in Toronto, Ottawa, and across Alberta before hanging up his guitar for a day job. Over the years he was a fruit picker, parking lot attendant, bootlegger, dishwasher, short order cook, journalist, sailor, busker, cab driver, and sky tram operator in Jasper, among dozens of other jobs.

After moving to PEI and starting a family, he and his wife launched a music distribution company that grew into a booking and management business. He has worked with The Chieftains, Bruce Cockburn, Mickey Rooney, Johnny Clegg, Pete Seeger, Fairport Convention, The Bay City Rollers, Mick Taylor and many more.

Once his children were older, the words came back, this time as poetry. His 2018 spoken word album 'A Blossom for Job' led to a regular CBC Radio feature, 'Word Is with Bob Jensen.' He has performed in Canada, England and Australia and collaborated with Bruce Cockburn, Ani DiFranco, Lennie Gallant, Oysterband, Martin Simpson, James Keelaghan, Rick Mercer, Annie Gallup, Claire Lynch, Tony McManus, Sylvia Tyson and more.

His words have travelled the world. Claire Lynch's recording of 'Who But Man,' with lyrics by Jensen, hit #1 on an American bluegrass chart two years in a row, and his reimagining of 'Which Side Are You On' reached #1 on two international charts. Zimbabwe's Black Umfolosi turned his poems into an entire a cappella album, 'Reason to Believe,' and Great Stars Ijongosi have recorded several more. Gallup set a dozen of his poems to music for 'Did You Hear the Red-Winged Blackbird,' and he was the most played artist on England's Norfolk Radio in 2021.

His catalogue also includes 'Prayer to Morning,' 'Live in Australia' with Tony McManus, the covers album 'For the Sake of the Song' featuring James Keelaghan, the holiday collection 'The Silver Wren,' 'The Blarney Session' and an 'Eleanor Rigby' cover with Ray Cooper and Gallup, along with the novel 'The Matchbox Funeral' and the poetry collection 'A Sense of Wonder.' Two more albums and a book of poetry are on the way.

Now, from a city where Cohen once wrote it down, Jensen and Martín have sent 'Suzanne' out into the world once more, a prayer and a love song rising like incense, just as Jensen always heard it.

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