Lorenna Mckennitt

Singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Loreena McKennitt is one of Canada's most beloved national artists, a folk chanteuse, and a new age troubadour who made her breakthrough in the mid-'80s with her literate and oft-experimental focus on Celtic-tinged traditional and original material, coupled with her haunting harp playing. As her career progressed, McKennitt began incorporating Spanish, Galician, and Arabic themes into her repertoire, culminating in a trio of career-defining albums – The Visit, The Mask and Mirror, and The Book of Secrets – that made her an international star. McKennitt went on a long hiatus after the tragic death of her fiance in 1998, but returned to the studio in 2006 with the acclaimed The Book of Secrets, followed by a string of EP's and concert and studio albums, with highlights arriving via 2010's trad-Celtic LP The Wind That Shakes the Barley and 2018's inward looking Lost Souls.

Loreena McKennitt is in her element in front of an audience, telling interesting stories about the songs and assembling a topnotch backing band. This is her first live release available to the public, and uses material from three concerts (one from Paris and two from Toronto) to put together a complete show. As with The Book of Secrets tour, the first half is The Book of Secrets in its entirety, arranged in the same order as the studio CD. This material is covered on the first CD, and it has never sounded better. The live performance seems to breathe new life into the tracks and some songs, such as "Dante's Prayer" and "Skellig," sound better than the studio recordings.

Loreena McKennitt is a Canadian singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist, She was born in 1957, in the province of Manitoba. She is best known for producing world music albums that encompass both Celtic and Middle Eastern themes…

Loreena McKennitt is a Canadian singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist, She was born in 1957, in the province of Manitoba. She is best known for producing world music albums that encompass both Celtic and Middle Eastern themes…

Press play and enter the world of Loreena McKennitt, where walls dissolve into thick, billowing mists as the ground beneath your feet turns to compacted earth and the sky above opens up to reveal a black cloak dotted with shimmering stars draped beneath silk-like clouds. Were McKennitt's composing and songwriting abilities lacking of any luster (as they most certainly are not), her voice would still possess the strength to hold her fifth album, The Mask and Mirror, up on its own. But the combination of this talented woman's vocal prowess and songwriting ability makes her all the more similar to her work – ethereal and almost unbelievable in its level of quality.

Nights from the Alhambra chronicles ethereal Canadian Celtic/folk/worldbeat artist Loreena McKennitt's 2006 tour in support of her Ancient Muse album. Recorded in September in the Palace of Charles V at the Alhambra, a southern Spanish fortress on the eastern border of the city of Granada built by the Moors, McKennitt employed a 12-piece band that included hurdy-gurdy, oud, uilleann pipes, kanoun, strings, and multiple percussion players. Though there is an emphasis on works from her most recent release, the singer/composer/harpist covers a wide breadth of material from 1985's Elemental ("She Moved Through the Fair") to 1991's acclaimed Visit ("All Souls Night," "Lady of Shalott") and beyond. As with all of her studio recordings, the sound quality is exquisite, making this – her third live collection – the best yet.

This Christmas EP (or, more accurately, "Winter Holiday" EP) features lushly produced folk renditions of seasonal traditionals and McKennitt originals. Like all of McKennitt's material, these songs gorgeously blend folk traditions from around the world (with an emphasis on the Irish and Scottish), seasoned with a sizable dose of literate universalist mysticism, and undistractingly garnished with a shimmering, glossy modern pop polish.

The Book of Secrets, the follow-up to 1994's The Mask and Mirror – there was a Christmas EP, A Winter Garden, released in 1995) – finds Loreena McKennitt in the same musical vein, mixing Celtic, Spanish, Italian, and new age to create her own distinct sound. The only problem is that she did not seem to progress much during the time between releases. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since she still knows how to write incredible melodies and layer instruments to produce peaceful images. "Night Ride Across the Caucasus" and "Dante's Prayer" are just two prime examples of this. And she continues her practice of setting classic poetry to music (Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman").

Canadian singer/composer/harpist Loreena McKennitt's lush Celtic-infused balladry and worldbeat sensibilities lend themselves well to holiday music, a genre she toyed with in 1995 on her Winter Garden: Five Songs for the Season EP. Released in 2008, A Midwinter Night's Dream takes those five songs (newly remastered) "Coventry Carol," "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," "Good King Wenceslas," "Snow," and "Seeds of Love," and adds eight new songs (all of which were recorded at Peter Gabriel's Real World recording studio) including "The Holly and the Ivy," "In the Bleak Midwinter," "Breton Carol," and "Emmanuel." The songs are immaculately produced as always, and McKennitt's predilection for Eastern mysticism and unique instrumentation keeps them from falling into the usual seasonal clichés.

To commemorate the 30th-anniversary of her breakthrough album, Mask And The Mirror, Loreena McKennitt presents this live album recorded in San Francisco on May 19, 1994. Featuring staples from the McKennitt canon, including “The Mystic's Dream,” “The Bonny Swans,” “Marrakesh Night Market” and “The Two Trees.”