Singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Loreena McKennitt stands among Canada’s most cherished national figures, blending the roles of folk chanteuse and new age troubadour. She first rose to prominence in the mid-’80s through literate, frequently experimental explorations of Celtic-inflected traditional pieces and originals, anchored by her distinctive harp work. Over time she wove Spanish, Galician, and Arabic motifs into her catalog, a trajectory that peaked with the trio of albums The Visit, The Mask and Mirror, and The Book of Secrets, each of which elevated her to global recognition. Following the 1998 death of her fiancé she withdrew for an extended period, resurfacing in 2006 with Ancient Muse and then issuing successive EPs alongside live and studio sets, among them the traditionally rooted 2010 release The Wind That Shakes the Barley, the introspective 2018 collection Lost Souls, and the buoyant 2023 album The Road Back Home.
Born to a nurse mother and a father who traded livestock, she trained in classical piano and voice while mastering highland dance during childhood. Time spent in Winnipeg’s folk clubs, where she immersed herself while briefly pursuing veterinary studies at the University of Manitoba, deepened her attachment to traditional music. After moving to Stratford, Ontario, she honed her craft as both composer and performer. In 1981 she tried out for the Stratford Festival of Canada yet was not cast; the experience nonetheless proved formative. Inspired by Diane Sward Rapaport’s guide How to Make and Sell Your Own Recording, she established her own imprint, Quinlan Road.
Two early releases—a nine-song cassette titled Elemental in 1985 and the Christmas collection To Drive the Cold Winter Away in 1987—preceded her initial commercial stride with the 1989 album Parallel Dreams. Supported by independent distributors, that record moved more than 40,000 copies inside four months. Its achievement was eclipsed by her fourth album, The Visit, which Warner Canada placed in stores and which surpassed 600,000 units (six-times platinum) in Canada while earning a Juno Award, an honor repeated by the 1994 follow-up The Mask and Mirror.
Although her recordings favored lush, melodic settings, the texts drew on the verse of W.B. Yeats, William Blake, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Her compositions appeared in numerous theatrical and cinematic scores. In 1989 the National Film Board of Canada commissioned her to score the series Woman and Spirituality; later projects included the films Jade, Highlander III, and Disney’s The Santa Clause, as well as the television programs Northern Exposure, Due South, and EZ Streets.
Her commercial apex arrived in 1998 with the single “The Mummers’ Dance.” A pop-oriented remix propelled the parent album The Book of Secrets to number three in Canada and into the Billboard Top 20, her strongest chart placement to that point. That July, however, her fiancé Ronald Rees perished during a sailing excursion on Georgian Bay alongside his brother and a family friend. Work halted as she mourned, and speculation about retirement spread. At the moment of his death she had been mixing the live set Live in Paris and Toronto at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios. Captured at Salle Pleyel in Paris and Massey Hall in Toronto during spring 1998, the album appeared in 1999; proceeds were directed to the Cook-Rees Memorial Fund she created to support water-safety programs nationwide. Nearly a decade would pass before she issued new original material.
Entering the new century she granted herself space to heal yet remained active through assorted local and national charities. A Spanish-language rendition of “Dante’s Prayer” featured in the 2001 Canadian/Venezuelan film A House with a View of the Sea. She headlined a 2002 concert in Winnipeg for Queen Elizabeth and received the Order of Canada the following year. In 2005 she commenced work on her seventh studio album, Ancient Muse, issued in 2006 and reaching the Canadian Top Ten. The live CD/DVD Nights from the Alhambra followed in 2007, succeeded by the holiday collection A Midwinter Night’s Dream, which incorporated the complete 1995 Winter Garden EP together with eight fresh recordings. A Mediterranean Odyssey appeared in 2009, pairing the studio compilation Olive and the Cedar with the tour document From Istanbul to Athens.
The 2010 release The Wind That Shakes the Barley returned her to the traditional Celtic approach of her formative work. Two years afterward came the live, unplugged Troubadours on the Rhine: A Trio Performance. The 2013 retrospective The Journey So Far: The Best of Loreena McKennitt assembled twelve signature tracks from her eight studio albums and singles on one disc, supplementing them with a bonus disc of performances taped in Mainz, Germany, during the 2012 A Midsummer Night’s tour. Her tenth album, Lost Souls, arrived in 2018 as her first full-length set of originals since Ancient Muse, presenting richly textured, cinematic worldbeat-infused modern folk pieces that echoed her earliest recordings. Captured live in Stratford, Ontario, in December 2021, the double album Under a Winter’s Moon offered seasonal material interspersed with readings by actors Tom Jackson and Cedric Smith and by Ojibwa artist and flautist Jeffrey Red George. The Road Back Home, released in 2023, found her once more mining traditional Celtic repertoire that evoked the warmth and camaraderie of her initial years on the folk circuit.
