On March 8, 2024, the Canadian artist and winner of the Juno Award will release a new album. She is returning to the origins of her career and this time devoting herself more to traditional Celtic music.

Exploring more traditional forms of Celtic music, Loreena McKennitt's brilliant 2024 release The Road Back Home marks an inspired return to her roots. The album features 10 songs, including many pieces that date back to McKennitt's earliest days on the folk circuit and which have remained unrecorded until now. Although recognized today as a cultural cross-pollinator and a ground-breaking leader of the contemporary Celtic Music scene, McKennitt's journey began in the humble folk clubs and the nascent festival scenes of her childhood home in Western Canada.

Parallel Dreams, the Canadian harpist/songwriter's quietly moving sophomore release, finds the mystical red-haired siren in true balladeer form. By far McKennitt's most romantic venture – the liner notes describe the project's central theme as a "yearning toward love, liberty and integration" – Dreams is more ambitious than her sparse, impeccably recorded debut, Elemental, tripling the amount of players and laying the groundwork for the immense scope she would go on to attain on future recordings. The heartbreaking trio of "Standing Stones," "Annachnie Gordon," and "Dickens' Dublin" – the latter features an effective radio-show sample of an unnamed Irish school child detailing the birth of Christ – stand among the artist's finest works, and the range and clarity of her voice is undeniably powerful. Parallel Dreams was an emotional and career-turning point for McKennitt, as her next recording would be the major-label spectacle The Visit.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This CD was nominated for a Grammy award in 2007 for Best Contemporary World Music Album.
Canadian Celtic/new age/worldbeat architect Loreena McKennitt may be an odd choice for the legendary jazz label that released benchmark albums from Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, but Verve may have been moved by the undeniably talented harpist/composer/vocalist's large collection of globe-spanning gold, platinum, and multi-platinum sales awards. McKennitt's records (this is her first set of new material since 1997's Book of Secrets) tend to play like independent soundtracks to National Geographic documentaries - kind of like a more ornate, expensive version of Dead Can Dance. An Ancient Muse may break little new ground for McKennitt, but it won't disappoint longtime fans…

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.

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").

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's 'Under A Winter's Moon' was recorded live during a series of seasonal concerts in a historic church sanctuary around the time of the solstice in December 2021. The two-disc package features approximately an hour's worth of music and half an hour of spoken word which intertwine to create a unique and evocative seasonal listening experience. 'Under A Winter's Moon' is a captivating live performance rich with a miscellany of carols and tales that incorporate McKennitt's eclectic Celtic sound with elements of indigenous oral traditions found in many cultures.

The Visit: The Definitive Edition package contains five discs (4 Compact Discs and 1 Blu-Ray) including five hours of previously unreleased content. In addition, The Visit is the first ever Loreena McKennitt recording to be mixed in Surround Sound inc Dolby Atmos. Available in a deluxe, limited edition, DVD-sized and book-shaped box set containing a 32-page booklet including previously unseen photographs and a four part essay, written by Loreena, discussing the recording of The Visit and other aspects of its 30-year legacy. Features 19 previously-unreleased live performances including a 1992 solo radio session, 2016 trio tour recordings and a 1992 CBC Radio in-concert broadcast.

The Juno Award-winning album that propelled Loreena McKennitt onto the international stage 30 years ago is set to be released on September 24 as The Visit. The original album, recorded in 1991, has since sold more than two million copies across more than 40 countries and is viewed as a defining, page-turning moment in the Canadian artist’s career.
“Thirty years seems like a long time, no matter how you measure it,” says McKennitt. “Looking back as through a picture frame, one can better see what that period was in its context. I’ve heard from so many people how this recording became a kind of soundtrack for their lives around the time it was released in the early 1990s.”
The Visit: The Definitive Edition is available in two formats. There is a deluxe limited-edition, hardback book format containing four CDs and one audio Blu-ray disc, a 32-page illustrated booklet and hours of previously unreleased content including the first-ever surround sound mixes of McKennitt’s music. Additionally, there is a 15-track highlights edition available exclusively from streaming and download services, featuring the original album and six classic songs from The Visit performed live in concert and on the radio.