Loreena McKennitt

Loreena McKennitt
Background information
Birth name	Loreena Isabel Irene McKennitt
Born	17 February 1957 (1957-02-17) (age 54) Morden, Manitoba, Canada
Origin	Stratford, Ontario, Canada
Genres	Celtic, world, New Age
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, producer
Instruments	Voice, piano, harp, accordion
Years active	1985–present
Labels	Quinlan Road, Warner Bros., Verve Forecast, Universal
Website	quinlanroad.com

Loreena Isabel Irene McKennitt, CM, OM, (born February 17, 1957) is a Canadian singer, composer, harpist, accordionist and pianist who writes, records and performs world music with Celtic and Middle Eastern themes. McKennitt is known for her refined, clear soprano vocals.^[1] She has sold more than 14 million records worldwide.^[2]

Early life

McKennitt was born in Morden, Manitoba of Irish and Scottish descent to parents Jack (died 1992; a livestock dealer) and Irene McKennitt (1931-2011; a nurse). She moved to Stratford, Ontario in 1981, where she still resides.

When Loreena was young she wanted to become a veterinarian but she found that music chose her rather than she it.^[3] Developing a passion for Celtic music, she learned to play the Celtic harp and began busking at various places, including St. Lawrence Market in Toronto in order to earn money to record her first album.^[4]

Career

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), A Winter Garden (1995), The Book of Secrets (1997), An Ancient Muse (2006), A Midwinter Night’s Dream (2008), and The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2010). All of her work is released under her own label, Quinlan Road.

In 1990, 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. The main theme would later be rerecorded by her and her band and called "Tango for Evora," a track which appears on her album, The Visit.

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. 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.

Her music appeared in the movies The Santa Clause, Soldier, Jade, Holy Man, The Mists of Avalon and Tinkerbell; and in the television series Roar, Due South, Ever After, and Full Circle (Women and Spirituality).

Personal life

In 1998, McKennitt's fiancé Ronald Rees, his brother Richard (not the British actor) and their close friend Gregory Cook drowned during a boating accident on Georgian Bay. She was deeply affected by the event and subsequently 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, totaling some three million dollars.^[5] After the release of the live album, McKennitt decided to substantially reduce the number of her public performances and did not release any new recordings until the studio album An Ancient Muse in 2006.

Honors

• Juno Award, Best Roots/Traditional Album 1992, for The Visit.
• Juno Award, Best Roots/Traditional Album 1994, for The Mask and Mirror.
• Billboard Music Award for International Achievement, 1997.
• Headline performer for HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Prince Philip at The Golden Jubilee Celebrations, Province of Manitoba, 2002.
• Honorary Doctor of Letters, Wilfrid Laurier University, 2002.
• Member of the Order of Manitoba, July 2003.
• Member of the Order of Canada, July 2004.
• Honorary Doctor of Laws, University of Manitoba, June 2005
• Canadian Ambassador, Hans Christian Andersen Bicentennary, June 2005
• Honorary Doctor of Laws, Queen's University, October 2005
• Investiture as Honorary Colonel, 435 Transport and Rescue Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, December 2006
• Nominated for a Grammy award, Best Contemporary World Music Album, in 2007
• Western Canadian Music Awards Lifetime Achievement Award, September 2009
• Performed at Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, Opening Ceremonies, February 12, 2010
• Honorary Bachelor of Applied Business, George Brown College, June 2010

Genre and work

McKennitt's music has generally been classified as World / Celtic music even though it contains aspects and characteristics of music from around the globe and is sometimes classified as Folk music in record stores.^{[citation needed]}

Before McKennitt composes any music, she engages in considerable research on a specific subject which then forms the general concept of the album.^{[citation needed]} Before creating Elemental and Parallel Dreams, she traveled 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 engaged in studying Galicia, a Celtic section of Spain, along with its abundant Arabic roots.^{[citation needed]} 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.

McKennitt is compared to Enya,^{[citation needed]} but McKennitt's music is more grounded in traditional and classical invocations,^{[citation needed]} 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), "Snow" by Archibald Lampman, "Dark Night of the Soul" by St. John of the Cross, Dante's Prayer, William Blake's "Lullaby", Yeats' "The Stolen Child", "It was an English Ladye Bright" by Sir Walter Scott and "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes.

Court case

Main article: McKennitt v Ash

In 2005, McKennitt was involved in an acrimonious court case in England when her former friend and employee, Niema Ash, published a book which contained intimate details of their friendship. McKennitt argued that much of the book contained confidential personal information which Ash had no right to publish. The English courts found that there had indeed been a breach of confidence and a misuse of McKennitt's private information, and the case is likely to set important precedents in English law on the privacy of celebrities.^[6] The House of Lords affirmed the lower court's decisions in 2007.

2006 and later

In September 2006, McKennitt performed live at the Alhambra. 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 a song she titled "To The Fairies They Draw Near" as the theme song for Disney's direct-to-video animated film Tinker Bell. She also provided the narration for the film.^[7]

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.^[8]

Since the release of An Ancient Muse, Loreena has toured consistently, with a European and North American tour in the spring of 2007, an extensive cross Canada and United States tour in the fall of 2007, a summer tour of Europe in 2008 and a Mediterranean tour in the summer of 2009 with stops in Greece,^[9] Turkey, Cyprus, Lebanon, Hungary and Italy.

On September 17, 2009, McKennitt announced that she planned to release a two-disc album titled "A Mediterranean Odyssey" in the fall of 2009. The first CD, "From Istanbul to Athens," consisted of ten new live recordings made during McKennitt’s 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 the years of 1994 and 2006.

November 16, 2010 saw the US release (November 12 for Europe) of McKennitt's latest studio album, "The Wind That Shakes the Barley." Recorded at the Sharon Temple, Ontario, it consists of nine traditional Celtic songs. "Every once and again there is a pull to return to one's own roots or beginnings, with the perspective of time and experience, to feel the familiar things you once loved and love still," says Loreena.

Documentaries

Late in the 1990s, McKennitt created No Journey's End, a half-hour documentary, for American television. In it, she discussed the influences behind her music. No Journey's End contained excerpts from several songs from the albums Parallel Dreams, The Visit, and The Mask and Mirror. It also shows live performances of the songs "The Lady of Shalott," "Santiago," and "The Dark Night of the Soul." It was later released on DVD and VHS, the former also containing music videos for "The Mummers' Dance" and "The Bonny Swans." A bonus copy of the DVD was included with the 2004 remastered versions of McKennitt's CDs.

In 2008, Loreena released A Moveable Musical Feast, based on her 2007 An Ancient Muse tour. The DVD included interviews with Loreena, her band, crew, fans and professional colleagues from the Canadian music industry.

Discography

Studio albums

Year	Album details	Peak chart positions			Certifications (sales threshold)
		CAN [10][11]	GER [12]	US [13]
1985	Elemental Release date: 1985 Label: Quinlan Road	—	—	—
1987	To Drive the Cold Winter Away Release date: 1987 Label: Quinlan Road	—	—	—
1989	Parallel Dreams Release date: 1989 Label: Quinlan Road	—	—	—
1991	The Visit Release date: 1991 Label: Warner Bros./Quinlan Road	28	—	—	BR: Gold[14] CAN: 4× Platinum[15] US: Gold[16]
1994	The Mask and Mirror Release date: 1994 Label: Quinlan Road	4	18	143	ARG: Gold[17] CAN: 3× Platinum[15] US: Gold[16]
1997	The Book of Secrets Release date: September 30, 1997 Label: Warner Bros./Quinlan Road	3	7	17	ARG: Gold[17] CAN: 4× Platinum[15] US: 2× Platinum[16] GER: Gold[18]
2006	An Ancient Muse Release date: November 21, 2006 Label: MRA/Quinlan Road	9	15	83	CAN: Platinum[15]
2008	A Midwinter Night's Dream Release date: October 28, 2008 Label: Universal/Quinlan Road	12	27	140
2010	The Wind That Shakes the Barley Release date: November 12, 2010 Label: Quinlan Road	13	28	141
"—" denotes releases that did not chart

Live Albums

Year	Album details	Peak chart positions			Certifications (sales threshold)
		CAN [10][11]	GER [12]	US [13]
1995	Live in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts Release date: 1995 Label: Quinlan Road	—	—	—
1999	Live in Paris and Toronto Release date: 1999 Label: Quinlan Road	—	65	—
2007	Nights from the Alhambra Release date: August 21, 2007 Label: Verve/Quinlan Road	—	11	190	GER: Platinum[18]
2009	A Mediterranean Odyssey Release date: October 20, 2009 Label: Quinlan Road	11	—	—
"—" denotes releases that did not chart

Compilations

Year	Album details	Peak chart positions			Certifications (sales threshold)
		CAN [10][11]	GER [12]	US [13]
1997	The Best of Loreena McKennitt Release date: 1997 Label: Quinlan Road	-	-	-	-
"—" denotes releases that did not chart

EPs

Year	Album details	Peak chart positions	Certifications (sales threshold)
		CAN [11]
1995	A Winter Garden: Five Songs for the Season Release date: November 1995 Label: Quinlan Road	44	CAN: Gold[15]
"—" denotes releases that did not chart

Boxed sets

• The Journey Begins (2008)

Singles

Year	Single	Peak chart positions[19][20]				Album
		CAN	US	US AC	US Pop
1991	"The Lady of Shalott"	—	—	—	—	The Visit
	"All Souls Night"	—	—	—	—
	"Courtyard Lullaby"	—	—	—	—
1993	"Greensleeves"	—	—	—	—
1994	"The Bonny Swans"	75	—	—	—	The Mask and Mirror
	"Santiago"	—	—	—	—
	"The Dark Night of the Soul"	—	—	—	—
1995	"The Mystic's Dreams"	—	—	—	—
	"God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen"	—	—	—	—	A Winter Garden: Five Songs for the Season
1997	"The Mummers' Dance"	10	18	23	14	The Book of Secrets
1998	"Marco Polo"	—	—	—	—
2006	"Caravanserai"	—	—	—	—	An Ancient Muse
2007	"Penelope's Song"	—	—	—	—
2008	"The Seven Rejoices of Mary"	—	—	—	—	non-album single
	"Noël Nouvelet!"	—	—	—	—	A Midwinter's Night Dream
2009	"Dante's Prayer"	—	—	—	—	non-album single
"—" denotes releases that did not chart "*" indicates unknown chart positions.

Videos

• H.M.S. Pinafore Live performance recorded during the 1981 Stratford Festival in Stratford Ontario, Canada, starring Michael Burgess, Katherine Terrell, Eric Donkin, Kenneth Pearl, Jim White, et al.; Loreena McKennitt performed in the chorus. (CBC VHS 1986)
• The Mummers' Dance (1997)
• The Bonny Swans
• Nights from the Alhambra (2007, Live concert in Spain premiered on PBS)^[21]
• A Moveable Musical Feast (2008, A tour documentary from Loreena's 2007 North American Tour)^[21]

Other

• No Journey’s End (half-hour profile, aired on PBS; DVD)
• Heaven on Earth (TV Movie 1987 - played "Lady Traveler")
• Highlander III (Soundtrack contribution)
• The Santa Clause (Soundtrack contribution)
• Léolo (Soundtrack contribution)
• Una casa con vista al mar (Soundtrack contribution)
• The Mists Of Avalon (Soundtrack use)
• The Burning Times (Soundtrack contribution)
• Due South (Soundtrack use)
• Northern Exposure (Soundtrack use)
• Tinker Bell (Direct to DVD movie, 2008 - Narrator)
• Soldier (Soundtrack use)

References

1. ^ "Loreena McKennitt". Progreviews.com. http://www.progreviews.com/reviews/display.php?rev=lm-tmam. Retrieved 2011-03-02. 
2. ^ Alex (2010-12-13). "Folk Radio UK". Folkradio.co.uk. http://www.folkradio.co.uk/2010/12/loreena-mckennitt-releases-new-album/. Retrieved 2011-03-02. 
3. ^ "About Us - Loreena McKinnett Introduces Herself". Quinlan Road. http://quinlanroad.com/aboutus/lmintro.asp. Retrieved 2011-03-02. 
4. ^ If You Must, Label Her 'Enlightened' Pop music: Loreena McKennitt, who performs in Irvine tonight, sings ethereal material, but don't pigeonhole the harpist as New Age.", L.A. Times, November 29, 1994
5. ^ "Explore The Music - Live in Paris and Toronto". Quinlan Road. http://www.quinlanroad.com/explorethemusic/liveinparis.asp. Retrieved 2011-03-02. 
6. ^ "Publicity-shy singer wins privacy claim". CBC News. December 21, 2005. http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2005/12/21/Loreena-McKennitt.html. 
7. ^ "Loreena sings theme song and narrates Disney’s ''Tinker Bell'' - 5 July 2008". Quinlanroad.com. http://www.quinlanroad.com/newsandviews/currentupdates.asp?id=782. Retrieved 2011-03-02. 
8. ^ "A Midwinter Night's Dream Loreena’s newest recording for the winter season set for release October 2008 - 7 October 2008". Quinlanroad.com. http://www.quinlanroad.com/newsandviews/currentupdates.asp?id=822. Retrieved 2011-03-02. 
9. ^ "Tέλος Ιουνίου οι συναυλίες της Loreena McKennitt" (End of June Concerts Loreena McKennitt), rocking.gr (Greek)
10. ^ ^{a b c} "Loreena McKennitt Album History - Canadian Albums". Billboard. http://www.billboard.com/#/artist/loreena-mckennitt/chart-history/85749?f=309&g=Albums. Retrieved November 24, 2010. 
11. ^ ^{a b c d} "RPM Results". http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/rpm/028020-110.01-e.php?PHPSESSID=sp19smnjn4io5g2nmhli5tdfo5&q1=loreena+mckennitt&q2=Top+Albums%2FCDs&interval=20. Retrieved November 24, 2010. 
12. ^ ^{a b c} musicline.de / PhonoNet GmbH. "Die ganze Musik im Internet: Charts, News, Neuerscheinungen, Tickets, Genres, Genresuche, Genrelexikon, Künstler-Suche, Musik-Suche, Track-Suche, Ticket-Suche". musicline.de. http://musicline.de/de/chartverfolgung_summary/artist/MCKENNITT%2CLOREENA/longplay. Retrieved 2011-03-02. 
13. ^ ^{a b c} "Loreena McKennitt Album Chart History - Billboard 200". Billboard. http://www.billboard.com/#/artist/loreena-mckennitt/chart-history/85749?f=305&g=Albums. Retrieved November 24, 2010. 
14. ^ "ABPD - certificados". Associação Brasileira dos Produtores de Discos. http://www.abpd.org.br/certificados_interna.asp. Retrieved 2011-08-29. 
15. ^ ^{a b c d e} "CRIA album certifications". Canadian Recording Industry Association. http://www.cria.ca/cert_db_search.php/cert_db_search.php?page=2&wclause=WHERE+artist_name+like+%27%25Sarah+McLachlan%25%27+AND+%28+cert_search+%3D+1+OR+cert_search+%3D+2+OR+cert_search+%3D+5+OR+cert_search+%3D+6+OR+cert_search+%3D+7+OR+cert_search+%3D+8+%29+ORDER+BY+cert_date%2C+cert_award+&rcnt=36&csearch=0&nextprev=1. Retrieved 2010-11-24. 
16. ^ ^{a b c} "RIAA Gold & Platinum albums - Loreena McKennitt". Recording Industry Association of America. http://riaa.com/goldandplatinumdata.php?resultpage=1&table=SEARCH_RESULTS&action=&title=&artist=Loreena%20Mc%20Kennitt&format=ALBUM&debutLP=&category=&sex=&releaseDate=&requestNo=&type=&level=&label=&company=&certificationDate=&awardDescription=&catalogNo=&aSex=&rec_id=&charField=&gold=&platinum=&multiPlat=&level2=&certDate=&album=&id=&after=&before=&startMonth=1&endMonth=1&startYear=1958&endYear=2008&sort=Artist&perPage=25. Retrieved 2010-11-24. 
17. ^ ^{a b} "CAPIF - Discos de Oro y Platino". Argentine Chamber of Phonograms and Videograms Producers. http://www.capif.org.ar/Default.asp?PerDesde_MM=0&PerDesde_AA=0&PerHasta_MM=0&PerHasta_AA=0&interprete=loreena&album=&LanDesde_MM=0&LanDesde_AA=0&LanHasta_MM=0&LanHasta_AA=0&Galardon=O&Tipo=0&ACCION2=+Buscar+&ACCION=Buscar&CO=5&CODOP=ESOP. Retrieved 2011-08-29. 
18. ^ ^{a b} "Bundesverband Musikindustrie: Gold-/Platin-Datenbank - BETA". Musikindustrie.de. http://www.musikindustrie.de/gold_platin_datenbank/#topSearch. Retrieved 2011-03-02. 
19. ^ "Billboard chart positions - singles". Billboard. http://www.billboard.com/#/artist/loreena-mckennitt/chart-history/85749. Retrieved 2010-11-24. 
20. ^ "RPM results". collectionscanada.gc.ca. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/rpm/028020-110.01-e.php?PHPSESSID=sp19smnjn4io5g2nmhli5tdfo5&q1=loreena+mckennitt&q2=Top+Singles&interval=20. Retrieved 2010-11-24. 
21. ^ ^{a b} "Explore The Music - Nights From The Alhambra". Quinlan Road. http://www.quinlanroad.com/explorethemusic/nights.asp. Retrieved 2011-03-02. 

External links

• Quinlan Road (official website of Loreena McKennitt)
• Loreena McKennitt interview from the echoes public radio show

Persondata
Name	Mackennitt, Loreena
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	February 17, 1957
Place of birth	Morden, Manitoba, Canada
Date of death
Place of death