Loreena McKennitt concert

[pegkerr]

Last night was wonderful. Thank you, thank you, elisem for gifting me with a ticket to the concert!

As long-time readers of this journal know, I have a special place in my heart for Loreena McKennitt, and both the singer herself and her music became integrally intertwined with the writing of The Wild Swans. This is the picture which started it all:

Loreena McKennitt This picture of Loreena McKennitt was the image that crystallized the character of Eliza in my imagination. I kept this picture and referred to it throughout the writing of the novel. Note the hooded eyes, wide mouth, "feathery" hair and strong jawline, all part of Eliza's characterization.

Back in, I think, 1996, a few days after I had the dream that I mentioned in the book's afterward, of a silent woman with a striking face, sitting on a park bench in a deserted city park, watching swans swim on a pond, I ran across this picture in the newspaper. I thought, "Huh, she kind of looks like the woman in my dream." I didn't cut the picture out. A few days later, I was listening to "The Thistle and Shamrock" and a gorgeous woman's voice was singing, "The Bonny Swans." I turned up the radio, wondering who was it who was singing so beautifully. "That was Loreena McKennitt" the announcer said, "who will appearing in concert next week." Loreena McKennitt? I was sure I had read that name recently. Then it occurred to me: that was the name of the woman in the picture in the newspaper. I went and dug it out of the stack and cut it out. The face and the swans: it must be a sign. I went to the phone and ordered tickets to the concert. Her music blew me away: I bought all of her CDs and listened to them over and over while writing the book.

Going and hearing her again last night was like coming home. She has not appeared in concert or released an album for a decade; she went into what seemed to be a creative retreat after the tragic drowning of her fiance in 1998. But with her new album, she's better than ever (a fact which, oddly enough, has given me a weird sort of hope for me, as proof that creativity can be revived even if it retreats for awhile.)

Since she has become the embodiment of Eliza in my imagination, it was almost as if I was watching Eliza singing to me, which made it even more amazing. The very first song she performed was "She Moved Through the Fair," part of which I used as a chapter epigram in Swans:

She went her way homeward
With one star awake
As the swans in the evening
Move over the lake.

The people were saying
No two e'er were wed
But one has a sorrow
That never was said

Her voice is amazing. It is incredibly flexible: she can sing a line with infinite tenderness, with the simplicity and quietness of a leaf falling on a perfectly still pond. And then, oh god, she leans into the line, her voice swelling up in exquisite control, soaring up in crystalline perfection, growing more and more powerful until you can hardly believe it, until your jaw drops in awe and the hairs rise on the back of your neck and the words pierce you to the heart. Here's a good example of how she can make tenderness swell into power. I spoke in The Wild Swans of the way one person can look at another that pierces the soul. Elias and Sean had a conversation about this, comparing it to James Joyces' concept of epiphany, to the look that Sarah gives Charles in The French Lieutenant's Woman. That is what Loreena McKennitt's music does to me: it pierces my soul.

And she has a band of splendid musicians to back her up, many of whom she has worked with for years. Hugh Marsh on violin (the man is also amazing), Brian Hughes on electric and acuoustic guitars, oud, and celtic bouzouki, and Rick Lazar on percussion were with her the last time she toured. Her immensely flexible voice is particularly suited to accompaniment by cello and violin, and she made good use of them. Not only is she a wonderful singer, she plays piano, harp and concertina, and she does her own arrangements, which were wonderful.

I had only two quibbles: she dropped a lot of the verses on Lady of Shalott, which I suppose she had to do, since it's a rather lengthy song. And she didn't perform "Ce He Mise Le Ulaingt/The Two Trees," based on the poem by Yeats. I've written before about the special significance this poem has for me, here.

But all and all, it was a terrific evening. She performed many of my favorites, including "The Highwayman," "Santiago" (really a showstopper, Hugh Marsh practically burned up his fiddle strings) and "Marco Polo," which I firmly believe is the most erotic song in my entire CD collection.

So . . . I'm not a music critic, nor terribly musically knowledgeable, and so I can't promise mine is a very sophisticated analysis. But hey, I liked it. Can you tell? And I'm very grateful that I had the opportunity to go.

Set list:

Set One
She Moved Through The Fair
The Gates of Istanbul
The Mummer's Dance
Bonny Portmore
Marco Polo
The Highwayman
Dante's Prayer
The Bonny Swans
Caravanserai

Set Two
Raglan Road
The Mystic's Dream
Santiago
The Lady of Shalott
Beneath a Phrygian Sky
The Old Ways
Never Ending Road

There were three encores; I didn't note the songs, sorry.

Comments

[kfitzwarin.livejournal.com]

That's *terrific* to hear, that she's still fabulous after the break. Thanks for sharing.

[ironymaiden]

yay! i'm glad to know it was good. i have tickets to see her in Seattle.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, lovely. She's one of my favorites; I carry several of her CDs to work with me every day.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

I had something of an odd, interesting experience seeing Loreena McKennitt perform. The first time, she was the closing act at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. That was in the days that the Sunday night concert went as long as Saturday's, if not longer. It was well after midnight and cold out. It had been a great Baggiecon, and I was ready for the finale -- the festival's traditional songs followed by Baggiecon's group sing of "Ripple" and the singalong on the walk back to the campsite. One more night of great music awaited us all around the campfire, and that promised warmth, too.

But first, Loreena McKennitt had to perform. The only thing I knew was that she was a harpist. It took seemingly forever for the stage to be set for her -- it was much, much longer than most set changes. Then, finally, her music. It was good, very pretty, but way, way too quiet and slow for my mood and sensibilities at the time. It was too cold and too late at night -- I needed music to energize and warm me, not lead me toward a shivering sleep.

Her set finally ended, thank Ghu. The festivities and fire that followed revived my energy, and her music was soon a memory of mistiming.

A few years later, she performed at the State Theatre, where you saw her last night. galacticvoyeur and I went. I wanted to give her music and performance another chance -- maybe I'd like it better indoors. I forget whether I'd already picked up a copy of "The Visit" by then; I probably had. There had to be something more than the memory from the Manitoba prairie drawing me to spend the money on tickets.

The performance was great. The music was great. And I was thoroughly surprised to be walloped firmly upside the head and heart with the personal epiphany that her music is best heard outdoors, drifting upon the air, dissipating into the distance, rather than captured by walls indoors.

Much as I grumbled at the time, I'd imprinted on that performance at Bird's Hill Park. While I would enjoy seeing and hearing her perform again indoors or out, I'd go to considerably more effort to see her in an outdoor concert. I don't know if she does them these days -- at brief glance, all of the US venues on her current tour look like indoor venues.

Thank you for writing about the concert! I'd enjoyed your earlier posts about the connections to The Wild Swans, and find it quite wonderful and thoughtful that elisem took you to see Loreena McKennitt perform. And, yes, I do believe that creativity can and does ebb and flow fully again over the course of one's life. Sometimes it returns in familiar form, sometimes it finds other outlets of expression.

[airemay.livejournal.com]

That's so cool!! And that picture is a dead ringer for Eliza. Wow! I just reread The Wild Swans last weekend. It was hard to keep from crying on the plane! It's lovely when your favorite books still affect you that much after reading them a few times.

[nanonano.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear you enjoyed your Loreena performance as well. I saw her at DAR Constitution Hall in DC where she was fabulous. She did drop a number of verses on "Lady of Shalott" in mine too, so maybe she's doing an abridged version for the live performances. I love her musicians. Hugh Marsh always blows me away and having the cello there provided a nice counterpoint. I do find I appreciate certain songs like "Marco Polo" more in a live environment than the cd version.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

Just curious, but have you ever written Mckinnett and told her about the influce she had on TWS?

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Yes, I did, and I sent her a copy of the book. I never got a reply. (Didn't expect one, though.)

[silme.livejournal.com]

That wonderful night you experienced was why we went to another country to see her last month. I was determined not to miss her on this tour. I'd seen her previously in Boulder, Colorado, several times, but my husband had not -- those dates were before I met him. We had a holiday in Belgium just to make her show in Antwerp. (We were behind and didn't learn of the London show until it was sold out.)

I'm so glad you had such a lovely night!

[crookedfeet.livejournal.com]

Thanks much for the report.

[morganmalfoy.livejournal.com]

this might be annoying rather than encouraging, but I was telling my aunt she might like the book Gilead, and I was reading the back and it said something about how the author wrote Gilead 24 years after her first novel (I think she wrote a non-fictioin in between or something) and I was thinking about you and your writer's block and your angst over whether or not you are a writer, etc, and I was thinking Gosh, this author went 24 years without publishing....and then won the pulitzer prize. That just seems like she really probably had to overcome some crippling self doubt or a really long dry spell, rather than just being too busy or something to write for two decades.

My point being....things change all the time, and if it's meant to be, you'll write another novel, or maybe 10, and if it's not, it's not.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Watershed speaks to that in me, as I decide which way the path is going...

I'm going to post something on that, Peg, I know you're in for recovery (get well soon!) but it might interest you how I'm accessing the subconscious.

Which has been writing a book while I've been ill, apparently.

Serious envy....

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should check out the concert schedule. (Yeah, like it's in budget. But got the new CD for the holidays!)

Concert

[tenantofwildfel.livejournal.com]

When I first read Wild Swans, I thought that Eliza sounded an awful lot like Loreena McKennitt . . . I'm glad that I wasn't mistaken.

I saw her perform in Ann Arbor on April 29th. My friend and I had nosebleed seats at the Michigan Theatre, but it was worth it. I'm glad to hear that you had a lovely experience as well.