Loreena McKennitt

Loreena Isabel Irene McKennitt, (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.

After performing at the inaugural Winnipeg Folk Festival in 1974, McKennitt developed an interest in Celtic music and visited Ireland to hear it for herself.

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 to earn money to record her first album.

In 1981, she moved to Stratford, Ontario, to join the Stratford Festival acting company, and still resides there.

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), and The Book of Secrets (1997).

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.

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".

McKennitt was born in Morden, Manitoba, of Irish and Scottish descent to parents Jack McKennitt (died 1992) and Irene née Dickey (1931–2011).

In Morden, she developed her love for music, influenced, in part, by the musical traditions of the local Mennonite community.

McKennitt enrolled at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg to become a veterinarian.

While in Winnipeg she discovered folk music, including fellow Canadians Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Gordon Lightfoot.

In 1993, she toured Europe supporting Mike Oldfield.

It contained previously released studio recordings created between 1994 and 2006.

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).

In July 1998, 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.

During 2005, McKennitt began work on the album that would become An Ancient Muse, her seventh full-length studio album, released in November 2006.

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 until the studio album An Ancient Muse in 2006.

In September 2006, she 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.

Since the release of An Ancient Muse, McKennitt has toured consistently, with a European and North American An Ancient Muse tour in 2007 and 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.

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.

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.

On September 17, 2009, McKennitt announced that she planned to release a two-disc album titled A Mediterranean Odyssey.

The first CD, "From Istanbul to Athens", consisted of 10 new live recordings made during 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.

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", said McKennitt.