Loreena Mckennitt Rulz!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last night was the Loreena McKennitt concert at Massey Hall. Massey
Hall is one of the oldest concert venues in Toronto. It is well over 100
years old, and has incredible acoustics. You can sit just about anywhere
in this old building and hear everything clearly. It is three levels, with
steep steps to navigate if you have seats in either of the balcony's. I
have sat up there once or twice and believe me, you almost need to
rappel down to your seat. I have height and dizziness issues so I hate
being in the balcony for anything.

Fortunately for last nights show we had our seats on the floor, about
four rows from the stage, on the right side. Not as central as I would
have liked, and a good distance over from Ms McKennitt's side of the
stage, but in the end that was my only quibble. The concert was
fantastic!!

It was the first time that I'd seen Loreena Mckennitt in concert since
1998. I also saw her in concert in 1994, and all three times were in
Massey Hall. Come to that, I also saw her taping a television appear-
ance at Massey Hall in 1993 for a Micheal Burgess special that ran on
CBC tv. Note: Michael Burgess was our Jean Val Jean when Les Miz
first played in Toronto. The original Jean ValJean, Colm Wilkinson,
was playing the Phantom in Toronto at the same time in our version
of Phantom of the Opera. But I digress....

As always Loreena had surrounded herself with a group of extra-
ordinary performers who recreated the music from her recordings
with flair, exuberance and passion. It was thrilling from beginning to
end as each song was performed. Loreena does not like to speak
much during her shows, preferring to let her music speak for her.
But occasionally she would explain a bit about a piece that they
were about to perform to give us an idea of how she came about
creating it, and where her inspiration had come from.

For anyone interested here is the set list for last night's show and
the album each appeared on.

Set 1: She Moved Through the Fair ~ Elemental
The Gates of Istanbul ~ An Ancient Muse
The Mummer's Dance ~ The Book of Secrets
Penelope's Song ~ An Ancient Muse
Marco Polo ~ The Book of Secrets
The Highwayman ~ The Book of Secrets
Dante's Prayer ~ The Book of Secrets
The Bonny Swans ~ The Mask and Mirror
Caravanserai ~ An Ancient Muse

Set 2: The Mystic's Dream ~ The Mask and Mirror
Santiago ~ The Mask and Mirror (this is awesome done live!!!)
Bonny Portmore ~ The Visit
Beneath a Phrygian Sky ~ An Ancient Muse
Kecharitomene ~ An Ancient Muse
The Lady of Shalott ~ The Visit (verses cut due to length, sadly)
The Old Ways ~ The Visit
Never-Ending Road (Amhran Duit) ~ An Ancient Muse

I very fervently hope that it won't be another nine years before we
can see Ms McKennitt again.

Since this is suppose to be a x-stitching blog as much as anything
here is a sampler stitched for DH and I when we got married so many
years ago. We received three samplers for wedding gifts, including
the one from my Mom featured in an earlier post. So DH has no
excuse for forgetting our anniversary. Lol!
Phoebe in a forbidden spot. DH picked me up after the concert last night
and it was midnight before we got home. We had both booked off work
today in anticipation of this, so we were able to sleep in. I'm just too old
to be going into work with only 5 hours sleep. It's a good day to be home
because the wind outside is roaring around like a freight train. And it's
cold out too. But the weather that we might have gotten yesterday and
today passed us by and is pounding other areas of the U.S. and Canada.
So gang, how do we like Spring so far????