[CD-cover] Loreena McKennitt - The Visit

This album includes, "[e]xpanding on earlier Celtic influences in an inventive and contemporary light ... a haunting version of Greensleeves, a musical setting of Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott, and original work ...".

Loreena writes in the CD booklet:

I have long considered the creative impulse to be a visit - a thing of grace, not commanded or owned so much as awaited, prepared for. A thing, also, of mystery. "Who is this, and what is here?" wonder Arthur's knights at the sight of the Lady of Shalott. This recording explores some of that mystery.
It looks as well into the earlier eastern influences of the Celts, the likelihood that they started from as far away as India before being driven to the western margins of Europe in the British Isles. With their musical influences came rituals around birth and death which treated the land as holy and haunted; this life itself as a visit. Afterwards, one's soul might move to another plane, or another from - perhaps a tree. The Celts knew then, as we are re-learning now, a deep respect for all the life around them. This recording aspires to be nothing so much as a reflection into the weave of these things.

Contents

  1. ALL SOULS NIGHT -- including a photo
    Music and Lyrics by Loreena McKennitt
  2. BONNY PORTMORE
    Music and Lyrics Traditional
  3. BETWEEN THE SHADOWS
    Music by Loreena McKennitt
  4. THE LADY OF SHALOTT -- including two photos
    Music by Loreena McKennitt
    Lyrics by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1843)
  5. GREENSLEEVES
    Music Traditional
    Lyrics by King Henry VIII
  6. TANGO TO EVORA
    Music by Loreena McKennitt
  7. COURTYARD LULLABY
    Music and Lyrics by Loreena McKennitt
  8. THE OLD WAYS
    Music and Lyrics by Loreena McKennitt
  9. CYMBELINE
    Music by Loreena McKennitt
    Lyrics by William Shakespeare (c. 1609)