Great Performances presents Loreena McKennitt: Nights From the Alhambra

Sunday, March 11 at 9 p.m. – Great Performances presents Loreena McKennitt: Nights From the Alhambra

Call it world music, folk or “eclectic Celtic,” the art of Loreena McKennitt remains a major presence in contemporary music. Long tapping her Celtic roots, and with over 13 million albums sold worldwide, the Canadian singer, composer, pianist and harpist has recently expanded her global perspective, particularly with Arabic and Eastern influences. These zesty additions are on full display in her first-ever concert special, Loreena McKennitt: Nights From the Alhambra, recorded in the breathtaking 13th-century Moorish palace in Granada, Spain, and premiering on Great Performances Sunday, March 11 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV 21 (cable 11).

Weaving exotic instruments such as the oud, Turkish clarinet and tabla drums into her trademark fiddles, uilleann pipes and Renaissance-style viols, McKennitt explains her mission at the top of the telecast. “This whole journey of mine, my fascination with the Celts, has been not only a musical journey but also a journey of self-discovery. It’s a kind of musical travel writing, if you will.”

Among the evening’s highlights are new renditions of such McKennitt favorites as The Mummers’ Dance and Bonny Portmore, plus selections from her new album, An Ancient Muse. As on the album, she alternates harp and piano for the Turkish-influenced Caravanserai, turns to a more contemporary mode for her crystalline vocalizing of Penelope’s Song and closes the proceedings on a soft note with the poignant Never-Ending Road (Amhrán Duit).

McKennitt’s beloved authors W.B. Yeats and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as well as 20th-century Irish poet Paul Kavanagh, receive their due with her musical settings of Stolen Child, The Lady of Shalott and Raglan Road.

Born in Manitoba to parents of Irish and Scottish descent, Loreena McKennitt moved to Stratford, Ontario, in 1981, where she released her first album, Elemental, in 1985. She began to attract global attention with subsequent releases of self-produced work, including To Drive the Cold Winter Away (1987), Parallel Dreams (l989), The Visit (1991), The Mask and Mirror (1994), A Winter Garden: Five Songs for the Season (1995) and The Book of Secrets (1997). Her single The Mummers’ Dance was a Top 20 Billboard singles chart success in early 1998. 

Her first full-length studio album in nine years, An Ancient Muse, was released in November 2006. It, and the telecast it spawned, offers ample evidence that McKennitt’s muse continues to inspire fresh journeys of magic and wonder.

For more information, visit www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf.

Pictured: Loreena McKennitt
Photo Credit: Donna Griffith