Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen spent decades in the same company of songwriters who reshaped what popular music could carry, and their personal history together — a friendship that shaded into romance and back again — is as much the subject of Both Sides Now: The Music and Lives of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen as the songs themselves. This theatrical cabaret has been working its way across the country in 2026 on the strength of sold-out performances, and its arrival at Kleinhans Music Hall‘s Mary Seaton Room on November 11 is precisely the kind of intimate booking that fits the material.
About the Show
Originally developed at Washington D.C.’s Signature Theatre, the show is a cabaret-style concert spanning thirteen songs, among them “A Case of You,” “Hallelujah,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” and “Suzanne,” framed within a narrative the creators describe as “a story about the messiness of being human, of lives persistently lived at the edge of growth, and of finding the courage to turn toward one another, again and again.” It presents Mitchell and Cohen as longtime friends and one-time lovers, tracing their relationship through the music they made together and apart. The production has been called “intimate, sophisticated, and remarkably enlightening.”
Co-created by and starring Danielle Wertz and Robbie Schaefer, the piece has the performers its premise requires. Wertz won a 2026 Grammy Award for Silent Course, recorded with Denmark’s Nordkraft Big Band, and works at the intersection of art song, folk, and jazz. DownBeat magazine has described her voice as “evocative… remarkably intimate, expressive and poignant.” She was the youngest semi-finalist in the 2015 Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition and placed in the 2017 Ella Fitzgerald Jazz Vocal Competition. Schaefer is the guitarist and songwriter for indie folk outfit Eddie From Ohio, was ordained as a rabbi in 2024, and is the theatrical artist whose musical Light Years premiered at the same Signature Theatre where this show originated. His stage work has been described as “intimate, witty and soulful — little adventures,” which maps well onto what this show asks of him. The Denver date on the current run sold out.
Venue & Logistics
The show plays the Mary Seaton Room at Kleinhans Music Hall, 3 Symphony Circle in Buffalo, with assigned seating throughout. Kleinhans is a concert hall venue central to the western New York live music calendar. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.; the performance begins at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets
No ticket price was available from sources at the time of publication. Tickets may be purchased through the Kleinhans Box Office at (716) 885-5000. Ticket sales are final; no exchanges or refunds. Buy tickets