An Ancient Muse

'An Ancient Muse' is "eclectic celtic" - singer / composer Loreena McKennitt's highly-anticipated first new studio recording in over nine years!

Taking up where her previous work left off, McKennitt fuses the melodic sensibility of Celtic balladry with musical traditions from Greece, Turkey, Spain, and beyond. Once heard, never forgotten, Loreena MacKennitt leads the listener on a timeless journey from the Scottish borders to the caravanserais of the "Silk Road" to the wine-dark seas of "Homer's Odyssey".

From the sinuous grooves of "Caravanserai" to the elegiac echoes of "The English Ladye and The Knight" and the plaintive refrain of "Penelope's Song," the album boasts an exotic tapestry of instruments.

Musical collaborators include Brian Hughes, Donald Quan, Hugh Marsh, Caroline Lavelle, Steáfán Hannigan, Rick Lazar, Hossam Ramzay, Annbjørg Lien, Nigel Eaton, Manu Katché, Charlie Jones, Ben Grossman, Jason Hann, Tal Bergman, Tim Landers, Clive Deamer, Ed Henley, Haig Yazdjian, Panos Dimitrakopoulos, Sokratis Sinopoulos and Georgios Kontogiannis and percussion ensemble Krotala.

In an age whose uncertainties and strife make it perhaps not so very distant from eras long past, An Ancient Muse's theme, McKennitt suggests, is that we can learn lessons from history if we choose to do so - by remembering those very particular places in time when religious harmony and cultural fusion brought diverse societies together. "I have not wavered in my conviction," she observes in the written introduction to An Ancient Muse, "that we are a culmination of our collective histories, and that there should be more to bind us together than tear us apart."