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Prospero and Miranda by William Maw Egley

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Prospero

Prospero ( /ˈprɒspəroʊ/ PROS-pər-oh) is the protagonist in The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare.

The Tempest[link]

Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, who (with his infant daughter, Miranda) was put to sea on "a rotten carcass of a butt [boat]" to die by his usurping brother, Antonio, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda survived, and found exile on a small island. He has learned sorcery (referred to as his "Art" in the play), and uses it while on the island to protect Miranda and control the other characters. On the island, he becomes master of the monster Caliban (the son of Sycorax, a malevolent witch), and Ariel, an elemental who has become enslaved by Prospero after he is freed from his prison inside a tree.

However, at the end of the play, Prospero intends to drown his book and renounce magic. In the view of the audience, this may have been required to make the ending unambiguously happy, as magic smacked too much of diabolical works; he will drown his books for the same reason that Doctor Faust, in an earlier play by Christopher Marlowe, promised in vain to burn his books.

Prospero's speech[link]

The final soliloquy and epilogue in The Tempest is considered to be one of the most memorable speeches in Shakespearean literature. In it, Prospero describes his loss (magic) and his imprisonment of Caliban and Ariel. He relates his imprisonment of them to that of his own bondage, which can only be undone by the applause of the audience. Many feel that since The Tempest was Shakespeare's last play (though he did write one more, with some assistance), Prospero's feelings echo Shakespeare's own.

Epilogue[link]

<poem style="font-style: italic;"> Now my charms are all o'erthrown, And what strength I have's mine own, Which is most faint: now, 'tis true, I must be here confined by you, Or sent to Naples. Let me not, Since I have my dukedom got And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell In this bare island by your spell; But release me from my bands With the help of your good hands: Gentle breath of yours my sails Must fill, or else my project fails, Which was to please. Now I want Spirits to enforce, art to enchant, And my ending is despair, Unless I be relieved by prayer, Which pierces so that it assaults Mercy itself and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardon'd be, Let your indulgence set me free. </poem>

In popular culture[link]

Literature[link]

• In the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic by Alan Moore, Prospero appears as a founding member of the first such grouping in 1610, alongside his familiars Caliban and Ariel.
• In The Sandman, the title character has William Shakespeare write The Tempest.
• In the short story "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe
• In the Dan Simmons Ilium and Olympos novels
• T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land"
• In John Bellairs's 1969 novel The Face in the Frost, Prospero is one of the protagonists.
• In Tad Williams' 1995 novel Caliban's Hour, the story of The Tempest is told through the point of view of Caliban with Prospero portrayed as the villain of the story, being shown as manipulative, prejudiced with colonialistic attitudes (especially towards Caliban) and capable of murderous violence.
• In Yury Olesha's 1924 novel Three Fat Men, one of the main characters is armorer Prospero

Film and television[link]

• In a 1960 television production of The Tempest, Prospero was played by Maurice Evans.
• Sir Michael Redgrave played Prospero in a BBC Play of the Month production in 1968.
• Heathcote Williams played Prospero in Derek Jarman's 1979 film version of The Tempest.
• Sir Michael Hordern played Prospero in a 1980 production for BBC television.
• A Stratford Shakespeare Festival production was videotaped and broadcast on television in 1983 starring Len Cariou as Prospero.
• In the Swedish animated 1989 film The Journey to Melonia, which is loosely inspired by The Tempest, Prospero is the ruler of the island Melonia.
• In Peter Greenaway's 1991 film Prospero's Books, Prospero is played by John Gielgud.
• In Julie Taymor's 2010 film adaptation of the play, Prospero is played by Helen Mirren and is now named Prospera.
• The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Emergence begins with Data playing Prospero.

Radio Plays[link]

• Melon Cauliflower by NZ playwright Tom McCrory. The play is about a man Prospero, in his late sixties who struggles to come to terms with the death of his wife, and has mistreated his daughter Miranda. [1]
• On 7 October 2001 BBC Radio 3 broadcast a production of The Tempest adapted for radio and directed by David Hunter starring Philip Madoc as Prospero, Nina Wadia as Ariel, Josh Richards as Caliban, Catrin Rhys as Miranda, Andrew Cryer as Ferdinand, Rudolph Walker as Gonzalo, James Laurenson as Alonso, Christian Rodska as Sebastian and Ioan Meredith as Antonio.
• David Warner played Prospero in the BBC Radio 3 Drama on 3 production of The Tempest broadcast on 6 May 2012 as part of the Shakespeare Unlocked series on the BBC. The production included Carl Prekopp as Ariel, Rose Leslie as Miranda, James Garnon as Caliban, James Lailey as Antonio and Peter Hamilton Dyer as Sebastian, and was adapted for radio and directed by Jeremy Mortimer.

Other[link]

• Loreena McKennitt sings a slightly altered version of the epilogue speech on her 1994 album The Mask and Mirror.
• Eric Gill's sculpture (1932), Prospero and Ariel
• R. Juha's sculpture (2004), Prospero
• The Economist has a blog on books, arts and culture that is called 'Prospero'.

References[link]

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2010)

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (March 2011)

Nyman in 2010

Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE (born 23 March 1944 in Stratford, London) is a British composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for the many film scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano. His operas include The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Letters, Riddles and Writs, Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs, Facing Goya, Man and Boy: Dada, Love Counts, and Sparkie: Cage and Beyond, and he has written six concerti, four string quartets, and many other chamber works, many for his Michael Nyman Band, with and without whom he tours as a performing pianist. Nyman stated that he prefers to write opera rather than other sorts of music.^[1]

Biography[link]

Nyman was born in Stratford, London. He was educated at the Sir George Monoux Grammar School, Walthamstow. He studied at King's College, London under Alan Bush.,^[2] and was accepted at the Royal Academy of Music in September, 1961, and studied with Bush and Thurston Dart, focusing on piano and seventeenth-century baroque music. He won the Howard Carr Memorial Prize for composition in July 1964.^[3]

In 1969, he provided the libretto of Harrison Birtwistle's opera Down by the Greenwood Side and directed the short film Love Love Love (based on, and identical length to, the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love"^[4]) before settling into music criticism, where he is generally acknowledged to have been the first to apply the term "minimalism" to music (in a 1968 article in The Spectator magazine about the English composer Cornelius Cardew). He wrote introductions for George Frideric Handel's Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 and conducted the most important interview with George Brecht in 1976.

Nyman drew frequently on early music sources in his scores for Greenaway's films: Henry Purcell in The Draughtsman's Contract and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (which included Memorial and Miserere Paraphrase), Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber in A Zed and Two Noughts, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Drowning by Numbers, and John Dowland in Prospero's Books, largely at the request of the director.

Nyman says he discovered his aesthetic playing the aria, "Madamina, il catalogo è questo" from Mozart's Don Giovanni on his piano in the style of Jerry Lee Lewis, which "dictated the dynamic, articulation and texture of everything I've subsequently done."^[5]

Nyman at the 2009 Venice Film Festival

He has scored numerous films, the majority of them European art films, including several of those directed by Peter Greenaway. His few forays into Hollywood have been Gattaca, Ravenous (with musician Damon Albarn), and The End of the Affair. He wrote settings to various texts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for "Letters, Riddles and Writs", part of Not Mozart. He has also produced a soundtrack for the silent film Man with the Movie Camera. Nyman's popularity increased after he wrote the score to Jane Campion's award-winning 1993 film The Piano. The album became a classical music best-seller. He was nominated for both a British Academy Award and a Golden Globe.

Among Nyman's other works are the opera Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs (1987), for soprano, alto, tenor and instrumental ensemble (based on Nyman's score for the ballet La Princesse de Milan); Ariel Songs (1990) for soprano and band; MGV (Musique à Grande Vitesse) (1993) for band and orchestra; concertos for saxophone, piano (based on The Piano score), violin, harpsichord, trombone, and saxophone & cello recorded by John Harle and Julian Lloyd Webber; the opera The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1986), based on a case-study by Oliver Sacks; and four string quartets. In 2000, he produced a new opera on the subject of cloning on a libretto by Victoria Hardie titled Facing Goya, an expansion of their one-act opera Vital Statistics. The lead, a widowed art banker, is written for contralto and the role was first created by Hilary Summers. His newest operas are Man and Boy: Dada (2003) and Love Counts (2005), both on libretti by Michael Hastings.

He has also composed the music for the children's television series Titch which is based on the books written and illustrated by Pat Hutchins.

Many of Nyman's works are written for his own ensemble, the Michael Nyman Band, a group formed for a 1976 production of Carlo Goldoni's Il Campiello. Originally made up of old instruments such as rebecs and shawms alongside more modern instruments like the saxophone in order to produce as loud a sound as possible without amplification, it later switched to a fully amplified line-up of string quartet, three saxophones, trumpet, horn, bass trombone, bass guitar and piano. This line up has been variously altered and augmented for some works.

Nyman also published an influential book in 1974 on experimental music called Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (Catalan, Spanish and French translations), which explored the influence of John Cage on classical composers.

In the 1970s, Nyman was a member of the Portsmouth Sinfonia – the self-described World's Worst Orchestra – playing on their recordings and in their concerts. He was the featured pianist on the orchestra's recording of Bridge Over Troubled Water on the Martin Lewis-produced 20 Classic Rock Classics album on which the Sinfonia gave their unique interpretations of the pop and rock repertoire of the 1950s–1970s. Nyman created a similar group called Foster's Social Orchestra, which specialised in the work of Stephen Foster. One of their pieces appeared in the film Ravenous and an additional work, not used in the film, appeared on the soundtrack album.

He has also recorded pop music with the Flying Lizards; a version of his Bird List from the soundtrack to Peter Greenaway's The Falls (1980) appears on their album Fourth Wall as "Hands 2 Take."

On 7 July 2007 Nyman performed at Live Earth in Japan. On 2008 Nyman realised, in collaboration with the cultural association Volumina, Sublime, an artist's book that unified his music with his passion for photography.

In a collaboration with friends Max Pugh and Marc Silver, Nyman is now beginning to exhibit his films and photography. Nyman’s video works are filmed with a hand-held camera, often before and after concerts and as part of his international travels, featuring everyday moments. Some works are left relatively unedited whilst others undergo split screens and visual repetition.^{[original research?]} Soundtracks to some of the video works use location sounds, whilst others recycle existing scores from his archive or a combination of both.

In October 2009, Nyman released The Glare, a collaborative collection of songs with David McAlmont, which cast his work in a new light. The album – recorded with the Michael Nyman Band – finds McAlmont putting lyrics based on contemporary news stories to 11 pieces of Nyman music drawn from different phases of his career.

"David did the research and chose most of the musical pieces," Nyman explains. "I suggested a few pieces,too but I really didn't do very much, although I think it's a true collaboration. You can identify who was responsible for what, but both aspects create a perfect synergy in which neither element can exist without the other."^{[cite this quote]}

Although the album was recorded in just two days, there was a huge amount of preparation and rewriting before they entered the studio. "They're third generation songs and when you listen to them, you ask 'Is it Nyman?' 'Is it soul?' 'Is it rock'n'roll?' It's all and none of them," the composer says. "I think we've created a new musical language. I'm no good at writing pop cliché – when I try, it invariably comes out sounding quite different."^{[cite this quote]}

The project has a long gestation for the pair first met in 2004 at a exhibition opening and talked about working together. Nothing came of it for almost five years until they got together again via Facebook, met up for lunch – and the idea for The Glare was born.

"I was surprised and delighted by what we've came up with," Nyman says. "So much so, that when I now play these pieces solo, it sounds like something's missing and the music needs David's voice and approach. That's a remarkable thing, because I've been playing these pieces for years. Of all the many collaborations I've been involved in, none has ever given me more pleasure and I'm desperate to take it on the road and play these."^{[cite this quote]}

Personal life[link]

He was married to Aet Nyman and has two daughters, Molly and Martha. His first string quartet quotes "Unchained Melody" in homage to Aet, who appears in Greenaway's The Falls, for which he also composed music. Molly is a composer in her own right; in collaboration with Harry Escott she has written several film scores including for The Road to Guantanamo by her father's frequent collaborator, Michael Winterbottom. Martha is a development researcher for the BBC.

Career highlights[link]

• 1961–67 – Studies at the Royal Academy of Music and King's College London.
• 1968–78 – Works as music critic (becoming first person to apply the word "minimalist" to music).
• 1976 – Founds the Campiello Band (now the Michael Nyman Band) and embarks on eleven-film collaboration with Peter Greenaway.
• 1981 – Releases first Michael Nyman Band album.
• 1993 – Soundtrack for The Piano wins an Ivor Novello Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA and American Film Institute award and goes on to sell over three million copies.
• 2002–2005 – Composer-in-Residence at Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, Germany, who performed three Nyman operas and more tunes for his daughters.
• 2007 – Performed on 7 July from Kyoto, Japan as part of the Live Earth global environmental awareness musical event.

Honours[link]

Nyman was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours.^[6]

Nyman was awarded an honorary doctorate (DLitt) from The University of Warwick on 30 January 2007. At the ceremony The University of Warwick Brass Society and Chamber Choir, conducted by Paul McGrath, premiered a specially composed procession and recession fanfare composed by Nyman.^[7]

Works[link]

• 1963 – Introduction and Allegro Concertato for Wind Quartet (lost)
• 1963 – Divertimento for Flute, Oboe and Clarinet
• 1965 – Canzona for Flute
• 1974 – Bell Set No. 1 (multiple metal percussion)
• 1976 – 1–100 (4–6 pianos)
• 1976 – (First) Waltz in D (variable)
• 1976 – (Second) Waltz in F (variable)
• 1977 – In Re Don Giovanni (ensemble)
• 1978 – The Otherwise Very Beautiful Blue Danube Waltz (multiple pianos)
• 1979 – "The Masterwork" Award Winning Fish-Knife (ensemble)
• 1980 – A Neat Slice of Time (choir)
• 1981 – Think Slow, Act Fast (ensemble)
• 1981 – Five Orchestral Pieces for Opus Tree (band*) (based on Anton Webern's Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 10)
• 1981 – M-Work (band)
• 1981 – 2 Violins
• 1982 – Four Saxes (Real Slow Drag) (saxophone quartet)
• 1983 – A Handsome, Smooth, Sweet, Smart, Clear Stroke: Or Else Play Not At All

(orchestra)

• 1983 – Time's Up (chamber ensemble)
• 1983 – I'll Stake My Cremona to a Jew's Trump (electric violin and viola, both players also simultaneously singing)
• 1983 – Love is Certainly, at Least Alphabetically Speaking (soprano and band)
• 1984 – The Abbess of Andouillets (choir)
• 1985 – Nose-List Song (soprano and orchestra) [this and the above three works are from an unfinished opera setting of Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, which Nyman has repeatedly cited as his all-time favourite book]
• 1985 – Childs Play (2 violins; harpsichord)
• 1985 – String Quartet No. 1
• 1986 – Taking a Line for a Second Walk (for orchestra (Basic Black) or piano duet)
• 1986 – The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (opera; libretto by Christopher Rawlence; adapted from the Oliver Sacks case study by Nyman, Rawlence, and Michael Morris^{[disambiguation needed ]})
• 1986 – And Do They Do (modern dance, 1986)
• 1987 – Vital Statistics (opera; libretto by Victoria Hardie)
• 1988 – String Quartet No. 2
• 1989 – Out of the Ruins (choir)
• 1989 – La Traversée de Paris (soprano and band)
• 1989 – The Fall of Icarus (band)
• 1989 – L'Orgie Parisienne Arthur Rimbaud setting (soprano or mezzo soprano and orchestra)
• 1989 – La Sept (band)
• 1990 – Shaping the Curve (soprano saxophone, string quartet or piano)
• 1990 – Six Celan Songs (contralto and orchestra)
• 1990 – Polish Love Song (soprano and piano)
• 1990 – String Quartet No. 3
• 1990 – The Kiss and Other Movements
• 1991 – The Michael Nyman Songbook A collection of songs based on texts by Paul Celan, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, William Shakespeare, and Arthur Rimbaud and recorded with vocalist Ute Lemper.
• 1991 – Where the Bee Dances (soprano saxophone and orchestra)
• 1991 – Fluegelhorn and Piano
• 1992 – Time Will Pronounce (violin, cello, and piano)
• 1992 – For John Cage (brass ensemble)
• 1992 – Self-Laudatory Hymn of Inanna and Her Omnipotence (alto and string orchestra or countertenor and viol consort)
• 1992 – The Convertibility of Lute Strings (solo harpsichord)
• 1992 – Anne de Lucy Songs (soprano and piano)
• 1992 – Le Mari de la Coiffeuse (The Hairdresser's Husband)
• 1992 – The Upside-Down Violin (orchestra/ensemble)
• 1993 – MGV: Musique à grande vitesse (band and orchestra)
• 1993 – The Piano Concerto (piano and orchestra)
• 1993 – Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs (1993; opera-ballet setting William Shakespeare's The Tempest)
• 1993 – Yamamoto Perpetuo (violin solo)
• 1993 – Songs for Tony (saxophone quartet)
• 1994 – To Morrow (soprano or soprano saxophone, organ)
• 1994 – 3 Quartets (ensemble)
• 1994 – Concerto for Trombone (trombone, orchestra, and steel filing cabinets)
• 1995 – String Quartet No. 4
• 1995 – Tango for Tim (In memoriam Tim Suster) (harpsichord)
• 1995 – The Waltz Song (unison voices)
• 1995 – Viola and Piano
• 1995 – Grounded (mezzo-soprano, saxophones, violin, piano)
• 1995 – HRT [High Rise Terminal] (chamber ensemble)
• 1995 – Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings
• 1995 – Double Concerto for Saxophone and Cello (saxophone, cello, and orchestra)
• 1996 – After Extra Time (ensemble)
• 1996 – Enemy Zero (game music)
• 1997 – Enemy Zero – Original Soundtrack
• 1997 – Strong on Oaks, Strong on the Causes of Oaks (orchestra)
• 1997 – The Promise (piano)
• 1997 – Gattaca
• 1998 – Titch (worked on the main opening/closing piano theme).
• 1998 – Cycle of Disquietude (Coisas, Vozes, Lettras) (soprano, mezzo-soprano, and band)
• 1998 – Orfeu (band)
• 1998 – De Granada A La Luna (band)
• 1999 – The Commissar Vanishes (band)
• 1999 – The End of the Affair
• 2000 – Facing Goya (opera; libretto by Victoria Hardie)
• 2001 – a dance he little thinks of (orchestra)
• 2003 – Violin Concerto (violin and orchestra)
• 2003 – Man and Boy: Dada (opera; libretto by Michael Hastings)
• 2005 – Love Counts (opera; libretto by Michael Hastings)
• 2006 – gdm for Marimba and Orchestra (concerto)
• 2006 – Acts of Beauty' (song cycle)
• 2007 – A Handshake in the Dark (choral piece with orchestra; text by Jamal Jumá [world premiere 8 March 2007, Barbican, London, performed by the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, John Storgards conducting])
• 2007 – Interlude in C (expansion of a theme from The Libertine for Accent07 touring ensemble)
• 2007 – Eight Lust Songs song cycle
• 2008 – Yamamoto Perpetuo for Solo Flute (arranged by Andy Findon)
• 2009 – Sparkie: Cage and Beyond opera with Carsten Nicolai
• 2009 – The Musicologist Scores (band)
• 2010 – 2Graves
• 2010 – Vertov Sounds

*originally recorded by Nyman, Ned Sublette, Susan Krongold, Barbara Benary, Jon Gibson, Richard Cohen^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Virgil Blackwell, Peter Zummo, and Peter Gordon at The Kitchen, and intended for Peter Greenaway's short film, The Tree.

Nyman's music re-used[link]

• Nyman's "The Heart Asks Pleasure First" (from The Piano) is the music on which Italian rock noir band Belladonna's song "Let There Be Light" is based. Released in December 2010, the track features Michael Nyman himself on piano.^[8]
• Nyman's "The Heart Asks Pleasure First" (from The Piano) was used as backing music for one of the bank advertisements for Lloyds TSB broadcast on television. It has also been featured in episodes of 20/20.
• Music from Ravenous has been used at least once on WFYI's Across Indiana, in a segment titled "On the Trail of John Hunt Morgan", produced by Scott Andrew Hutchins.
• Nyman's soundtrack for Carrington is mostly based on his own String Quartet No. 3.
• A Cock and Bull Story contains music from The Draughtsman's Contract, as well as Nyman's arrangements of classical music used in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (it does not use any music from Nyman's Tristram Shandy opera).
• Nyman's music for Peter Greenaway's films has been used in the Japanese television program Iron Chef.
• Popular "Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds" (from The Draughtsman's Contract) constituted the main theme of Spanish TV program Queremos Saber, presented by Mercedes Milà in the nineties.
• Nyman features in '9 Songs' (Michael Winterbottom, 2004) playing at the Hackney Empire on his 60th birthday.
• Nyman's MGV: Musique à grande vitesse was used in November 2006 for a new one-act ballet for the Royal Ballet in London, DGV (danse à grande vitesse) by Christopher Wheeldon.
• Nyman's "The Heart Asks Pleasure First" was covered by the Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish. Nyman had refused to release the song initially; the band was later granted permission and the song was released in February 29 2012 as part of the single The Crow, the Owl and the Dove from their album Imaginaerum.
• Time Lapse was used in Sky's 2008 'Heroes' advert
• Selections from Nyman's catalogue formed part of the soundtrack for James Marsh's 2008 documentary, Man on Wire, a film about Philippe Petit, a Frenchman, who in 1974 illegally strung a tightrope between the top of the WTC buildings and danced between them for 45 minutes, thus committing the "artistic crime of the 20th century".
• Nyman's piece "Car Crash" from A Zed & Two Noughts was used for once on the final episode of a Greek series called 'To Kafe Tis Xaras'

Recordings[link]

• Man and Boy: Dada – MN Records 102
• The Very Best of Michael Nyman: Film Music 1980-2001 – Virgin EMI CDVED957
• String Quartets 1–3 – Decca 4730912
• Decay Music EMI CVE964 2004

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Michael Nyman

• Michael Nyman official site
• Michael Nyman's homepage at Chester Music
• Michael Nyman at the Internet Movie Database
• Michael Nyman at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• The Power of the Cadence: Michael Nyman in conversation with Robert Davidson
• 'The Case Against Nyman Revisited' Recent article on Michael Nyman's use of pre-existing music
• Michael Nyman à grande vitesse, review article in The Oxonian Review
• Michael Nyman judged The Film of the Month competition in June 2009 on the independent filmmakers networking site Shooting People
• An Evening with Michael Nyman, BAFTA event video

Listening[link]

• Michael Nyman audio at Internet Archive

Loreena McKennitt
Background information
Birth name	Loreena Isabel Irene McKennitt
Born	(1957-02-17) 17 February 1957 (age 55) Morden, Manitoba, Canada
Origin	Stratford, Ontario, Canada
Genres	Celtic, world, New Age
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, producer
Instruments	Voice, piano, harp, accordion
Years active	1985–present
Labels	Quinlan Road, Warner Bros., Verve Forecast/Universal
Website	quinlanroad.com

Loreena Isabel Irene McKennitt, CM, OM (born February 17, 1957) is a Canadian singer, composer, harpist, accordionist and pianist who writes, records and performs world music with Celtic and Middle Eastern themes. McKennitt is known for her refined, clear soprano vocals.^[1] She has sold more than 14 million records worldwide.^[2]

Early life[link]

McKennitt was born in Morden, Manitoba of Irish and Scottish descent to parents Jack (died 1992; a livestock dealer) and Irene McKennitt (1931-2011; a nurse). She moved to Stratford, Ontario in 1981, where she still resides.

When Loreena was young she wanted to become a veterinarian but she found that music chose her rather than she it.^[3] Developing a passion for Celtic music, she learned to play the Celtic harp and began busking at various places, including St. Lawrence Market in Toronto in order to earn money to record her first album.^[4]

Career[link]

McKennitt's first album, Elemental, was released in 1985, followed by To Drive the Cold Winter Away (1987), Parallel Dreams (1989), The Visit (1991), The Mask and Mirror (1994), A Winter Garden (1995), The Book of Secrets (1997), An Ancient Muse (2006), A Midwinter Night’s Dream (2008), and The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2010). All of her work is released under her own label, Quinlan Road.

In 1990, McKennitt provided the music for the National Film Board of Canada documentary The Burning Times, a feminist revisionist account of the Early Modern European witchcraft trials. The main theme would later be rerecorded by her and her band and called "Tango to Evora", a track that appears on her album The Visit.

In 1993, she toured Europe supporting Mike Oldfield. In 1995, her version of the traditional Irish song "Bonny Portmore" was featured in the Highlander series. McKennitt's single "The Mummers' Dance" received airplay in North American markets during the spring of 1997, and was used as the theme song for the short-lived TV series Legacy. It also saw use in the trailer for a wide-release 1998 Drew Barrymore film Ever After.^[5]

Her music appeared in the movies The Santa Clause, Soldier, Jade, Holy Man, The Mists of Avalon and Tinkerbell; and in the television series Roar, Due South, and Full Circle (Women and Spirituality).

Personal life[link]

In 1998, McKennitt's fiancé Ronald Rees, his brother Richard and their close friend Gregory Cook drowned during a boating accident on Georgian Bay. She was deeply affected by the event and subsequently founded the Cook-Rees Memorial Fund for Water Search and Safety in the same year.

At the time of the incident, she was working on a live album of two performances called Live in Paris and Toronto. The proceeds from this album were donated to the newly created memorial fund, totaling some three million dollars.^[6] After the release of the live album, McKennitt decided to substantially reduce the number of her public performances and did not release any new recordings until the studio album An Ancient Muse in 2006.

Honours[link]

• Juno Award, Best Roots/Traditional Album 1992, for The Visit.
• Juno Award, Best Roots/Traditional Album 1994, for The Mask and Mirror.
• Billboard Music Award for International Achievement, 1997.
• Headline performer for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip at The Golden Jubilee Celebrations, Province of Manitoba, 2002.
• Honorary Doctor of Letters, Wilfrid Laurier University, 2002.
• Member of the Order of Manitoba, July 2003.
• Member of the Order of Canada, July 2004.
• Honorary Doctor of Laws, University of Manitoba, June 2005
• Canadian Ambassador, Hans Christian Andersen Bicentennary, June 2005
• Honorary Doctor of Laws, Queen's University, October 2005
• Investiture as Honorary Colonel, 435 Transport and Rescue Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, December 2006
• Nominated for a Grammy award, Best Contemporary World Music Album, in 2007
• Western Canadian Music Awards Lifetime Achievement Award, September 2009
• Performed at Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, Opening Ceremonies, February 12, 2010
• Honorary Bachelor of Applied Business, George Brown College, June 2010

Genre and work[link]

This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this section if you can; the talk page may contain suggestions. (September 2011)

McKennitt's music has generally been classified as World / Celtic music even though it contains aspects and characteristics of music from around the globe and is sometimes classified as Folk music in record stores.^{[citation needed]}

Before McKennitt composes any music, she engages in considerable research on a specific subject which then forms the general concept of the album.^{[citation needed]} Before creating Elemental and Parallel Dreams, she traveled to Ireland for inspiration from the country's history, folklore, geography and culture. The album The Mask and Mirror was preceded by research in Spain where she engaged in studying Galicia, a Celtic section of Spain, along with its abundant Arabic roots.^{[citation needed]} The result was an album that included elements of Celtic and Arabic music. According to the jacket notes, her album An Ancient Muse was inspired by travels among and reading about the various cultures along the Silk Road.

McKennitt is compared to Enya,^{[citation needed]} but McKennitt's music is more grounded in traditional and classical invocations,^{[citation needed]} using literary works as sources of lyrics and springboards for interpretation such as "The Lady of Shalott" by Lord Tennyson, "Prospero's Speech" (the final soliloquy in William Shakespeare's The Tempest), "Snow" by Archibald Lampman, "Dark Night of the Soul" by St. John of the Cross, Dante's Inferno, William Blake's "Lullaby", Yeats' "The Stolen Child", "The English Ladye and the Knight" by Sir Walter Scott and "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes.

Court case[link]

In 2005, McKennitt was involved in an acrimonious court case in Britain when her former friend and employee, Niema Ash, published a book that contained intimate details of their friendship. McKennitt argued that much of the book contained confidential personal information that Ash had no right to publish. The British courts found that there had indeed been a breach of confidence and a misuse of McKennitt's private information, and the case is likely to set important precedents in British law on the privacy of celebrities.^[7] The House of Lords affirmed the lower court's decisions in 2007.

2006 and later[link]

In September 2006, McKennitt performed live at the Alhambra. The performance premiered on PBS and in August 2007 was released on a three-disc DVD/CD set titled Nights from the Alhambra.

In 2008, McKennitt wrote and composed a song she titled "To The Fairies They Draw Near" as the theme song for Disney's direct-to-video animated film Tinker Bell. She also provided the narration for the film.^[8]

In early 2008, she returned to Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios to record A Midwinter Night’s Dream, an extended version of her 1995 mini-album A Winter Garden: Five Songs for the Season. The album was released on October 28, 2008.^[9]

Since the release of An Ancient Muse, Loreena has toured consistently, with a European and North American tour in the spring of 2007, an extensive cross Canada and United States tour in the fall of 2007, a summer tour of Europe in 2008 and a Mediterranean tour in the summer of 2009 with stops in Greece,^[10] Turkey, Cyprus, Lebanon, Hungary and Italy.

On September 17, 2009, McKennitt announced that she planned to release a two-disc album titled "A Mediterranean Odyssey" in the fall of 2009. The first CD, "From Istanbul to Athens," consisted of ten new live recordings made during McKennitt’s 2009 Mediterranean Tour, including songs she had never before recorded in concert. The second CD, "The Olive and the Cedar," had a Mediterranean theme which McKennitt herself curated. It contained previously released studio recordings created between the years of 1994 and 2006.

November 16, 2010 saw the US release (November 12 for Europe) of McKennitt's latest studio album, "The Wind That Shakes the Barley." Recorded at the Sharon Temple, Ontario, it consists of nine traditional Celtic songs. "Every once and again there is a pull to return to one's own roots or beginnings, with the perspective of time and experience, to feel the familiar things you once loved and love still," says Loreena.

Documentaries[link]

Late in the 1990s, McKennitt created No Journey's End, a half-hour documentary, for American television. In it, she discussed the influences behind her music. No Journey's End contained excerpts from several songs from the albums Parallel Dreams, The Visit, and The Mask and Mirror. It also shows live performances of the songs "The Lady of Shalott," "Santiago," and "The Dark Night of the Soul." It was later released on DVD and VHS, the former also containing music videos for "The Mummers' Dance" and "The Bonny Swans." A bonus copy of the DVD was included with the 2004 remastered versions of McKennitt's CDs.

In 2008, Loreena released A Moveable Musical Feast, based on her 2007 An Ancient Muse tour. The DVD included interviews with Loreena, her band, crew, fans and professional colleagues from the Canadian music industry.

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

Live albums[link]

Compilations[link]

EPs[link]

Boxed sets[link]

• The Journey Begins (2008)

Singles[link]

Videos[link]

• H.M.S. Pinafore Live performance recorded during the 1981 Stratford Festival in Stratford Ontario, Canada, starring Michael Burgess, Katherine Terrell, Eric Donkin, Kenneth Pearl, Jim White, et al.; Loreena McKennitt performed in the chorus. (CBC VHS 1986)
• The Mummers' Dance (1997)
• The Bonny Swans
• Nights from the Alhambra (2007, Live concert in Spain premiered on PBS)^[22]
• A Moveable Musical Feast (2008, A tour documentary from Loreena's 2007 North American Tour)^[22]

Other[link]

• No Journey’s End (half-hour profile, aired on PBS; DVD)
• Heaven on Earth (TV Movie 1987 - played "Lady Traveler")
• Highlander III (Soundtrack contribution)
• The Santa Clause (Soundtrack contribution, "The Bells of Christmas")
• Léolo (Soundtrack contribution)
• Una casa con vista al mar (Soundtrack contribution)
• The Mists Of Avalon (Soundtrack use)
• The Burning Times (Soundtrack contribution)
• Due South (Soundtrack use)
• Northern Exposure (Soundtrack use)
• Tinker Bell (Direct to DVD movie, 2008 - Narrator)
• Soldier (Soundtrack use)

References[link]