On of the most exciting per--

~~ formances : this community has

witnessed in recent years took

. place in the R.E.M, Lee Theatre

Friday. night as a trio led by Celtic harpist and vocalist Loreena McKennitt held a near- capacity audience in thrall: for two hours. '

by Michael Kelly.

Despite her name anda gently burred accent, McKennitt is from a small town in central Manitoba. She was raised with

- formal grounding in the classics, .

but she told the Terrace au- dience that when she heard a recording by a Celtic revivalist harper from Brittany her future was cast.

McKennitt herself has become:

the finest kind of true revivalist,

having mastered the traditional.

Celtic style and then refined it in the crucible of her own creativi-

_ ty. The pieces she offered.up Fri- - day night were selections from- three albums she has recorded.

Some were Celtic folk songs, others were selections of Irish poetry set to McKennitt’s music. _ Her:.instrument is the troubador harp, of a size mid-

-way between the pedaled concert

harp and the smaller Celtic harp.

.Flanked by a guitarist and an -acoustic bass player, she led the

evening off with a series of tradi- tional Irish songs, interspersed

with narrative that illuminated

the songs’ origins and lier first encounters with them, often on thé west coast of Ireland which is home to so many great and obscure musicians and tellers of tales.

McKennitt’s hands on the — harp were sharp, evocative and —

commanding. On the gauzily backlit stage the strings some- times vanished and she seemed

to be playing. the air itself, mak- -

ing the spaces in the theater

-almost live to the touch. But - what the audience took away

with them was the memory of that voice.

_As'she spoke between songs

her manner was soft, demur and confident, but when she entered the songs after each brief, pluck- ed introduction her voice dove

into the melody with the

sureness and j joy of a hawk eX: alting in the air.

: In “The Blacksmith”, a story in song of love deceived, the desolation of abandonment

was. subtly underlaid with

vengeful anger, delivered in a

tone just short of a sneer. The:

chorus of a subsequent song ran, ‘Huntsman, ruddy, blow your horn’’, and her voice became a call to the chase, echoing from

~-wooded hills. The singing and hharping ran -like all the manifestations of an elemental.

force, now plaintive and haun- ting, now plangent and thrilling

_..- With a wild, keening edge. The ” Jove and death anguish in ‘‘An- “nachae”, concluding the first

half, were enough to make the

_ hair stand up on the back of

your neck, . » This was the true face of

_ Celtic music, stripped of all the - phony sentimentality pasted on

it. by pop arrangers of the North American. music industry, revealing the ironic lyrical

Mysticism, :

the. world’s . ‘great creative

‘cultures.

Using: three stringed” in- struments, two of which play virtually .in. the same register, called for a combination of cau-

‘tion and recklessness in arrang-

ing to avoid monotony of tim- bre. The result was a fascinating

dialogue between harp and. -

guitar in the inner voices under- lined by a bass foundation while McKennitt’s voice ranged and probed through it all with the

‘melody. The guitarist and bass

player both had solo oppor. tunities in two of the evening’s

_ jazz. presentations. In: the solo

work and throughout the show, the two proved. themselves, as. McKennitt told the ‘audience in the introduction, to be something: well beyond” the level of studio musicians.

Two of the program’s picces’ were departures from the main theme, with McKennitt on piano backed by her cohorts. playing original’ |§compositions characterized by an insistent, ag-

-gressive double-time rhythm. . Although they showed the hand

of an accomplished and talented songwriter, in this program, they seemed like interludes. — The highlights of the evening were McKennitt’s own musical

settings of the poetry of Paedric -

Collm and that lyrical prince of ‘William :Butler Yeats. The concert :concluded with ‘‘The Stolen Child’’, verses

‘by: Yeats sung to a melody of

breathtaking intensity.

“Come away, human child

To the water and the wild,

With a fairy hand in hand,

The world’s more full of weeping ;

Than you can understand."”

She was accorded one of those -

rare Terrace tributes, a standing ovation. This performance will stand long and large in memory.

lf there’s a Celtic revival, it may include everybody

Some say there is a revival in the popularity of Celtic music,

and from the reaction of the au-

dience at the R.E.M. Lee Theatre last weekend, it appears that may be true.

by Tod Strachan

The offering of Celtic melodies by singer and harpist Loreena McKennitt. and a sprinkling of jazz by guitarist

‘Brian Hughes and acoustic bass player Shelly. Bergen were well received by an audience of about 400 Friday night.

‘McKennitt comes from an Irish background and was born in Morden, Manitoba, about 80 miles southwest of Winnipeg. She says she has always been in- terested in folk music but it was when she was 17 years old when her family moved to Winnipeg that her trie love of Celtic music began to grow. ‘‘I hung around

witha group who. were really in- to music ic from the British isles... .

subtleties, - arresting melodies» — and complex rhythms of one of &

[kerr eng ETI ge ce ee pays pce A gee

2 ARS Soca s-ohion gine ae

Loreena McKennitt, shown here in rehearsal prior to her performance in Terrace Friday night, has taken the Celtic music revival a step beyond historical reproduction and made the spirit of the music live again.

English, Irish, Scottish,’ she ex- plains. And this launched her career,

*“T was really smitten for life,’"’ says McKennitt, ‘and some years later I was able to find a harp England.”’ It wasn’t a new harp — she found it in a second hand shop.

She later furthered her study

‘of Celtic. music at an artists’

retreat in Ireland near a village named Annaghmakerrig. From her studies there and elsewhere, McKennitt has discovered some interesting facts about Celtic life

styles and. music that may ex-

plain to some degree the univer- sal acceptance of the Celtic melodic structure.

‘First, the Celtic culture originated in India. Many cen- turies ago, natives of India migrated to what are now the countries of Germany and Ireland. This, according to McKeniitt,. lias formed -an in-

glee

in London,

part,” says McKennitt,

visible bond that today transcends political divisions. One of these cultural bonds, says McKennitt, is a reverence for nature. A reverence for nature, she says, that’s very similar to that of the North American Indian.

This is a link which fascinates McKennitt. ‘‘They’re seen as two peoples. They live in dif- ferent geographical locations. But there are a lot of similarities,’’ she says. And not just in their reverence for

nature. According to McKen-

nitt, there are also similarities in

Native and Celtic music. ‘‘The

model structure is very

primitive,’ she explains, ‘‘and.

there are certain other rhythmetic similarities.”’

This fascination with history may dominate some of McKen- nitt’s time, but her first love will always be for Celtic music. ‘‘The music is an art form for my “not

just a form of entertainmen : "re : She adds to this her own view of |

the importance of Celtic music. “It’s an interpretive vehicle to explore history and culture with threads to the contemporary ex- perience,’’ says McKennitt. “It’s a vital vehicle, or catalyst, through which we can wrestle with our identity both in the past and in the future.”

With this firm belief and dedication to performing, it may be no accident that McKennitt’s talent is helping Celtic music to regain a foothold in our lives.

She sings. and plays traditional |

Celtic songs, but using the same melodic . structure and _ lyrical style she writes many of her own songs as well, Many may believe the result is just entertainment — but for McKennitt her music is much more, And if McKennitt is right, it may be that the emo- tions her audiences experience

have more to do with the past

than the present.