Loreena McKennitt concert

Last night, I saw Loreena McKennitt in concert for the second time. (The first time was May 13, 1998 -- the night before Ditch Day my senior year. At the time, I went anyway because I didn't know when my next chance would be and my decision turned out to be fortuitious because her current tour is her first one since then.)

As most of you should know, McKennitt is one of my favorite artists, although her musical style is a bit of a departure from my norm. An Ancient Muse, her first new album in almost 10 years, came out late last year. Loreena sang most of the songs from that album and nearly all of my favorites (and a few other songs) from the rest of her catalog. The only ones I really like that she didn't sing were obscure ones from her really early albums that I figure wouldn't be present. ("Blacksmith" and "Kellswater" are two such songs that come to mind. Actually, in the first encore, Loreena did sing one song I really like that I didn't expect to hear.) Loreena sang the shorter, more upbeat "radio edit" version of "The Mummers' Dance"; by contrast, she sang the "album version" of that song at the concert 9 years ago. Actually, while the songs that Loreena performed had a lot of overlap with the other concert, she sang many of them in different ways -- with extended riffs (for example, "Bonny Swans", which I recognized immediately -- my clapping predated the major flux of clapping in the audience by close to 30 seconds; those people are slow... :) -- was given an extended riff) and so on. The main part of the show was a bit longer than time around, and (to compensate) there were only 2 encores this time instead of 4.

Loreena occasionally cracked jokes during the concert, though this was often in response to comments from people at the front of the audience, so it was hard for me to follow them when I could only hear her answers and a small subset of the audience comments. One audience comments sounded like a request to play some Queen (though, based on context, I assume it was actually "Freebird"); Loreena responded with "Our next number will be 'Stairway to Heaven'." and one or two of the back-up musicians played a couple of chords from the song.

Anyway, McKennitt is a very talented, charismatic performer and I know that I made some of you utterly sick of her music (especially "The Mummers' Dance" and "Bonny Swans" [my two favorite songs by her]), but if you ever get a chance to see her in concert, I highly recommend that you do so.