The office is pleasantly unpopulated most Saturdays. When the fancy strikes I can bring out a portable CD player and spin a new disc or two, sans headphones. The song "The Mystic's Dream," from Loreena McKennitt's new album "The Mask and the Mirror," was playing one such afternoon when a co-worker happened by. McKennitt's dramatic soprano, backed by instruments ranging from Irish uilleann pipes to Indian tamboura and tabla, filled the room.
"What are you listening to?" my friend asked as he materialized atop the nearby staircase."An album by Loreena McKennitt," I said. He seemed perplexed, the music and the name new to him. "She likes to musically explore, mixing Eastern sounds with Celtic folk."
"Is that a good thing?" he wondered . . . his tone indicating that he had his doubts.
The fact is, this guy did not and would not like McKennitt's music. It's just not to his taste. But a few million people around the world discovered her eclectic style - part traditional, part experimental, often fascinating - with the release of her last album, "The Visit."
McKennitt is at the forefront of a burgeoning interest in music with a Celtic underpinning. The genre is actually quite broad. Small companies have sprung up to internationally market albums by obscure folkies from Ireland and Scotland. Major labels handle artists as diverse as the Chieftains (traditional folk), Clannad (folk-pop) and Enya (whose moody-modern approach actually has an Irish foundation).
McKennitt is Canadian but has Irish roots. Her Celtic heart, however, has led her far from Eire. On some tracks on "The Visit" - "All Souls Night" being the best example - she sprinkled sounds reminiscent of India and the Russian steppes, reasoning that the ancient Celts migrated from eastern regions and just might have employed such colors and tones.
In fact, leaps of musical imagination like that are her specialty.
"The Mask and the Mirror" pushes her vision of the Celtic frontier to its limits and beyond. She's fascinated with the crosspollination of various cultures at their edges - in medieval (once Celtiberian) Spain, in North Africa, in the British Isles. She's also intrigued by the age-old urge to understand the nature of God and ourselves - an underlying theme of this venturesome album.
And "The Mask and the Mirror" is indeed an adventure, a shared journey. McKennitt's accompanying notes are journal snippets from places as varied as Spain, Canada, Ireland and Morocco.
The sounds of all of these regions permeate the songs in a most dramatic fashion. "The Mystic" alone recalls Ireland, India and medieval Europe (including a Gregorian chant). The folk-tale derived "The Bonny Swans" and angelic "Full Circle" are almost - but not quite - traditional. "The Dark Night of the Soul" is an astonishing marriage of past and present, based on a metaphorical poem by 15th-century visionary St. John of the Cross. As on previous albums, she adopts and adapts the words of other poets as well: William Butler Yeats on the thoughtful song "The Two Trees" and Shakespeare on the cathedral-like finale, "Prospero's Speech," skillfully condensing the last lines from "The Tempest."
"The Mask and the Mirror" is not for everyone. Even those delighted by "The Visit" may need to give the collection a listen or two before the effect takes hold. But a great many will find both McKennitt's voice, with its classical elegance and folk inflections, and her search a source of wonderment.
While listening to the new album for the first time that suddenly busier-than-usual Saturday, another coworker dropped in. "Santiago," a Moorish-Spanish instrumental with wordless vocals, was playing.
"Do we have a belly dancer coming in," he said as he moved toward his desk.
- THOSE LOOKING for an overtly "Celtic" sound - all Irish harps, pennywhistles and age-old sorrows - might only be marginally interested in "Celtic Twilight." The overall cast of the music is contemporary - albeit with a hint of the past, as folk-like and traditional melodies sprinkle the 14 tracks.
That said, let it be understood that "Celtic Twilight" is an achingly pretty collection, mostly peaceful, intermittently lively.
The anthology takes its name from an 1893 book by Yeats. "Like the musicians presented here, the young poet longed to reconnect with what was even for him a vanishing world," Stephen Hill writes in the album notes.
And the Celtic-Gaelic spirit is indeed evident in songs by artists like fiddler Alasdair Fraser (a silken, sad rendition of the traditional "Lassie with the Golden Hair"), Loreena McKennitt ("Ancient Pines," a lullaby-like vocalise-and-cello piece), and especially Joanie Madden's haunting "Women of Ireland," featuring Irish whistles and acoustic guitar.
John Doan's simple "Farewell" somewhat ironically opens the program with a reflective guitar, strings and synthesizer arrangement. Mychael Danna swirls a subtle wash of synthesizers on "Deirdre of the Sorrows" and "Sky 7." Bill Douglas' "Sweet Rain" is a small-ensemble work featuring piano, oboe and flute. John Boswell offers a subdued piano piece, "Skye Boat Song."
Among the perkier numbers are Steve McDonald's "Eastlander," with its mildly exotic sampling of percussive and even Indian textures; Radhika Miller's rolling and memorable "Origins"; and Douglas' fanciful "Diamond Dance" and "Windhorse."