With her celestial voice that flutters like soft snow, Loreena McKennitt offers a double album that mixes legend, poetry and Christmas carols.
More than three decades later To Drive the Long Cold Winter AwayLoreena McKennitt returns to Christmas carols. Under a Winter’s Moonrecorded in December 2021 in concert in Stratford, Ontario, covers some pieces already performed in 1987: balulalow, banquet hall, Let Us the Infant Greet and The Wexford Carol.
This double album, which appears at the approach of the holiday season, is however more ambitious: it includes legends and a poetic suite by Dylan Thomas (said in particular by Aboriginal artists Tom Jackson and Jeffrey Red George) and traditional Christmas carols, rendered in Loreena McKennitt’s signature delicate, ethereal aesthetic.
Under a Winter’s Moon installs a comforting atmosphere where the celestial voice of the singer unfolds with beauty and arises in cases of strings (harp, cello, violin) and Irish flute. Loreena McKennitt chisels once again a fine album, with a sweetness imbued with magic, but also with a nostalgia behind which one feels gratitude.
Folk/Traditional
Under a Winter’s Moon
Loreena McKennitt
Quinland Road