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Loreena Isabel Irene McKennitt CM OM CD (born February 17, 1957) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer who writes, records, and performs world music with Celtic and Middle Eastern influences. McKennitt is known for her refined and clear soprano vocals. She has sold more than 14 million records worldwide
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McKennitt’s first album, Elemental, was released in 1985, followed by To Drive the Cold Winter Away (1987), Parallel Dreams (1989), The Visit (1991), The Mask and Mirror (1994),[8] A Winter Garden (1995), and The Book of Secrets (1997). All of her work is released under her own label, Quinlan Road.
In 1990, Loreena McKennitt provided the music for the National Film Board of Canada documentary The Burning Times, a feminist revisionist account of the Early Modern European witchcraft trials. She and the musical team she headed would later re-record the documentary’s main theme on her album The Visit under the title “Tango to Evora”.
In 1993, she toured Europe supporting Mike Oldfield. In 1995, her version of the traditional Irish song “Bonny Portmore” was featured in the Highlander series, followed by the 1994 film Highlander 3: The Sorcerer. McKennitt’s single “The Mummers’ Dance” received airplay in North American markets during the spring of 1997, and was used as the theme song for the short-lived TV series Legacy. It also saw use in the trailer for a wide-release 1998 Drew Barrymore film, Ever After.
Her music appeared in the movies The Santa Clause, Soldier, Jade, Holy Man, The Mists of Avalon, and Tinker Bell. It was also featured in the television series Roar, Due South, and Full Circle (Women and Spirituality).
Personal tragedy and pause
In July 1998, Loreena McKennitt’s fiancé Ronald Rees, his brother Richard, and their close friend Gregory Cook drowned in a boating accident on Georgian Bay. She was deeply affected by the event, and she founded the Cook-Rees Memorial Fund for Water Search and Safety in the same year. At the time of the incident, she was working on a live album of two performances called Live in Paris and Toronto. The proceeds from this album were donated to the newly created memorial fund, totalling some three million dollars.
After the release of the live album, McKennitt decided that she would substantially reduce the number of her public performances, and she did not release any new recordings.
Return to music: 2006–present
During 2005, McKennitt began working on the album An Ancient Muse, her seventh full-length studio album, released in November 2006. In September 2006, she performed live at the Alhambra in Spain. The performance premiered on PBS and in August 2007 was released on a three-disc DVD/CD set titled Nights from the Alhambra.
In 2008, McKennitt wrote and composed “To the Fairies They Draw Near” for the theme song for Disney’s direct-to-video animated film Tinker Bell. She also provided the narration for the film.
In early 2008, she returned to Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios to record A Midwinter Night’s Dream, an extended version of her 1995 mini-album A Winter Garden: Five Songs for the Season. The album was released on October 28, 2008.
Since the release of An Ancient Muse, Loreena McKennitt has toured consistently, in Europe and North American, including the Ancient Muse tour in 2007, another extensive tour across Canada and United States later in 2007, a tour of Europe in 2008 and a Mediterranean tour in 2009 with stops in Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Lebanon, Hungary and Italy.
On September 17, 2009, McKennitt announced the release of a two-disc album, A Mediterranean Odyssey. The first CD, “From Istanbul to Athens”, consisted of 10 new live recordings from her 2009 Mediterranean tour, including songs she had never before recorded in concert. The second CD, “The Olive and the Cedar”, had a Mediterranean theme, which McKennitt herself curated. It contained previously released studio recordings created between 1994 and 2006.
November 16, 2010, saw the US release (November 12 for Europe) of McKennitt’s studio album, The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Recorded at the Sharon Temple in Ontario, the album comprises nine traditional Celtic songs.
When McKennitt released The Wind that Shakes the Barley, she visited several countries to help promote the album. During the promotional tour she performed an hour-long concert in the studios of German radio station SWR1, accompanied only by Brian Hughes (guitars) and Caroline Lavelle (cello) who have long been part of her tours and recordings. This live concert was released on CD in 2011. Called Troubadours on the Rhine, the album was nominated for a 2012 Grammy for Best New Age Album.
On November 30, 2012, Loreena McKennitt lent her support to Kate Winslet’s Golden Hat Foundation together with Tim Janis, Sarah McLachlan, Andrea Corr, Hayley Westenra, the Sleepy Man Banjo Boys, Dawn Kenney, Jana Mashonee, Amy Petty, and a choir, along with others, performing on “The American Christmas Carol” concert at Carnegie Hall.
McKennitt’s 10th studio album, Lost Souls, was released on May 11, 2018. She planned a tour to support the album’s release in 2018 and 2019.
She had a small acting role in the 2018 film Road to the Lemon Grove, as the voice of God.
In 2019, McKennitt released the live album Live at the Royal Albert Hall, recorded earlier that year in London.
Musical Style
McKennitt’s music has generally been classified as World or Celtic music even though it contains aspects and characteristics of music from around the globe and is sometimes classified as folk music or New Age in record stores.
McKennitt is occasionally compared to Enya, but McKennitt’s music is more grounded in traditional and classical invocations, using literary works as sources of lyrics and springboards for interpretation such as “The Lady of Shalott” by Lord Tennyson, “Prospero’s Speech” (the final soliloquy in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest), the Northumbrian murder ballad “The Twa Sisters” (which inspired “The Bonny Swans” on The Mask and Mirror), “Snow” by Archibald Lampman, “Dark Night of the Soul” by St. John of the Cross, Dante’s Inferno, William Blake’s “Lullaby”, Yeats’ “The Stolen Child,” “The English Ladye and the Knight” by Sir Walter Scott, and “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes.
Before McKennitt composes any music, she engages in considerable research on a specific subject, which then forms the general concept of the album. Before creating Elemental and Parallel Dreams, she travelled to Ireland for inspiration from the country’s history, folklore, geography and culture. The album The Mask and Mirror was preceded by research in Spain where she studied Galicia, a Celtic section of Spain, along with its abundant Arabic roots.
The result was an album that included elements of Celtic and Arabic music. According to the jacket notes, her album An Ancient Muse was inspired by travels among and reading about the various cultures along the Silk Road.
Loreena McKennitt Discography (on Wikipedia)
Loreena McKennitt – The Book Of Secrets (Full Album)
Tracklist:
Prologue – 0:00 The Mummers’ Dance – 4:25 Skellig – 10:35 Marco Polo – 16:46 The Highwayman – 22:05 La Serenissima – 32:25 Night Ride across the Caucasus – 37:35 Dante’s Prayer – 46:05