New Loreena McKennitt Album Due This Fall - An Ancient Muse (Quinland Road/Verve)



It's been a long nine years since Loreena McKennitt's last album, The Book of Secrets (1997). This fall, Loreena will release her seventh studio album, An Ancient Muse. Check out the e-card announcement.



Here are all the details from the official Quinland Road/Verve Records press release.

For Immediate Release August 8, 2006
LOREENA McKENNITT TO RELEASE NEW ALBUM, AN ANCIENT MUSE THIS AUTUMN ON VERVE /QUINLAN ROAD

This autumn, Verve/Quinlan Road will release Loreena McKennitt’s label debut, An Ancient Muse. As with her earlier albums, McKennitt takes her inspiration from the Celtic peoples, fusing the melodic sensibility of Scottish and Irish balladry with musical traditions from Greece, Turkey, Spain, and even Scandinavia. The recording is McKennitt’s first new studio album since 1997’s multi-platinum The Book of Secrets.

Produced by Loreena McKennitt, An Ancient Muse continues McKennitt’s exploration of Celtic themes on a journey that sweeps across eras and musical genres, from the British Isles to ancient Greece and Byzantine- and Ottoman-era Turkey. As McKennitt herself describes it, “This record is a little like equipping yourself with a Eurail card. It’s like saying, I don’t know where I’m going to on this trip. I’m just going to get on board the train, and allow each encounter to lead to the next.”

The nine tracks on An Ancient Muse take the listener on a timeless journey: a return home in “The Gates Of Istanbul;” the wonder of nomadic wandering in “Caravanserai;” star-crossed love and the Crusades in “The English Ladye and the Knight” based on a poem by Sir Walter Scott; and loss and longing in “Penelope’s Song,” which takes as its subject Odysseus’ wife, waiting and worrying while he was off having the adventures immortalized in Homer’s The Odyssey. Despite the wide array of instrumentation (including oud, lyra, Swedish keyed fiddle and viols da gamba), all the performances derive from similar inspiration: the sense of landscape McKennitt brings to all of her work—a visual set of images, organically connecting the piece to musician and instrument.

McKennitt works from her hometown of Stratford, Ontario, Canada where she is self-managed, self-produced, and head of her own internationally successful record company, Quinlan Road. In a recording career spanning two decades, her music has won worldwide critical acclaim and gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards in fifteen countries across four continents. She has won numerous awards including the Billboard International Achievement Award and two Juno Awards.

McKennitt says of her collaboration with Verve: "In so far as this recording represents a musical journey of exploration, I am very much looking forward to working with the people at Verve in exploring the possibilities this new musical document may embody." “Loreena is a truly gifted artist, producer, and business person,” says President and CEO of the Verve Music Group Ron Goldstein. “The new album will surely please her dedicated and loyal audience, who have been anticipating this event for a long time. It is, once again, a masterpiece of originality, spirit, and great music. We are thrilled she has chosen to work with Verve.”

For more information, please contact Krista Williams or Carla Sacks at Sacks & Co., 212.741.1000, krista@sacksco.com or carla@sacksco.com, www.vervemusicgroup.com, www.quinlanroad.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Remembering the Main Point, 1964 - 1981

Image
WXPN Most Memorable Musical Moment #5 Begining in 1964, The Main Point in Bryn Mawr provided the Philadelphia area with one of its most enjoyable venues for live music. Although it started as a folk based coffeehouse, all styles of music were presented over the years. Financial problems continually plagued the Main Point, and in spite of frequent benefit shows by artists who loved the place as much as the audience, the club finally closed in 1981. The following brief history is contained in an obituary of Jeanette O. Campbell, one of the founders and owners of the Main Point who died on October 22, 2006, written by Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer Sally A. Downey as reprinted on the Save Ardmore Coalition website. Jeanette Orndoff Campbell, 89, former owner of the Main Point, a music hall in Bryn Mawr where young talents including Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and James Taylor were introduced to local audiences, died of complications from hip surgery Oct. 22 at Stap...
Read more

Cream and Blind Faith at the Spectrum, Philadelphia, 1968 & 1969

Image
WXPN Most Memorable Musical Moment #3 (L-R) Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, & Eric Clapton I could not have foreseen it at the time, but looking back on a concert going history now entering it's fifth decade, my first three concerts were absolutely formative in the development of the music obsession that has driven life as we know it from that point forward. Attending a rock concert pre drivers license was no small feat, that I even got to these shows is the first indication that I knew I was onto something even if I couldn't quite explain it. I've already detailed my first concert (The Beatles at JFK Stadium) in my MMMM#1 . My second and third concerts took place at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, they were less than a year apart, and due to the fact that concerts never end at the time predicted, these concert experiences both ended with a very angry driver stuck waiting in the car outside the venue until the last encore had finished. I shot both concerts with the same starter...
Read more

And We Danced - Filming the Hooters Video, 7/27/85

Image
WXPN Most Memorable Musical Moment #4 "And We Danced" (picture sleeve above) was released in 1985 as the second single from the album, Nervous Night , the Hooters' major label debut for Columbia Records. Here's the video. The call went out to the Hooters' mailing list the last week of July 1985 that an audience with cars would be needed on the coming Saturday for a video shoot. Participants would report to the Exton Drive-In by late morning and be prepared to stay all day until after dark. This stage set, early in the day, was a warm-up for the crowd and probably a dry run for the production team for the night-time performance to be filmed later. The banner backdrop does not appear in the video. Some of the antique and custom cars that were on hand for the shoot. The production crew prepares the ticket booth for its shot. This is the film crew shooting the acoustic intro part of the song. The acoustic intro was shot twice, first with t...
Read more