Loreena's Concert

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Because I didn't do it yesterday, I give you Loreena's Set List (with occasional bits of commentary from me):


Set One

She Moved Through the Fair:
This was actually given a kind of middle-eastern flavour in terms of the rhythm and some of the harmonies that got thrown in there.
It featured LM on Harp and vocals (duh) with Stratis Psaradellis on what I think was the Lyra (it might have been the Greek Lute, but it was bowed, so I don't think so). Donald Quan may have been playing a drone on his keyboard somewhere in the shadowy background, but I'm not sure.

The Gates of Istanbul
The Mummer's Dance

Bonny Portmore:
This was, not surprisingly, just heart-rendingly beautiful. As it should be. I just about cried. How lovely. :-) (Have I mentioned that I love cellos? I love chellos. :-)

Marco Polo (Folkloric Rocking Out - I love it!)
The Highway Man
Dante's Prayer (Gorgeous)

The Bonny Swans:
This featured a nifty little 'call and response' thing going on between Brian Hughes (electric guitar) and Hugh Marsh (violin/fiddle). I quite liked it. :-)

Caravanserai




Set Two

Raglan Road:
I've never heard this piece before, but it's just beautiful, and the arrangement they did made it all the more so. LM on Piano and vocals and Caroline Lavelle on Cello made a lovely trio of sound (lyrical and almost mournful - just wow. A beautiful piece done by two seriously talented women. I could have listened to that for hours). :-)

The Mystic's Dream

Santiago:
More folkloric rocking out. And how! Things to note:
(1) Ben Grossman on Hurdy Gurdy - it's possible that this instrument is second only to the... Harmonium(? - that one that's done with magnetic waves? "Good Vibrations"?) for sheer niftiness. I have no idea how it works, but it sounds really, really cool. :-)
(2) Loreena jumping around with her accordion. Oh, my god. (A) she must have the strongest body in the universe if she can play an accordion *and* sing (well!! With good, sustaining breaths!) at the same time, let alone while dancing around like that, and (B) Seeing her do that little rockstar!jump thing made me squeak with delight just because it's such an "I'm-a-rockstar-with-a-guitar" thing to do, and it was so charmingly out of context - and yet it was the kind of high-energy piece in-which you could totally do something like that. :-)
(3)Tal Bergman on drums. Metaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal! This is the man who, upon being introduced to the crowd at the NAC performed the horns salute to us all. He is a *very* good drummer (says someone who doesn't know much about drumming, but is capable of noticing a complex rhythmic pattern when it presents itself) - Paul says "that guy is, beyond any doubt what so ever, the best drummer I have ever seen in my life. He was, in fact, so impressed that he failed to notice the following:
(4) Hugh Marsh on violin/fiddle: Guh! He's Paganini reborn! Oh, my gods! He was incredible! His fingerwork was insane! (I could go on like this for some time, fairly obviously - at any rate, I was really bloody impressed. I'm surprised his fingers weren't bleeding by the end of this piece, alone). The crowd went completely nuts for him, my goodness. :-)

The Lady of Shalott
Beneath a Phrygian Sky
The Old Ways

Never Ending Road:
This one was, I think, a good one to end with, given the theme of the piece. The music always reminds me of another of her songs - "The Two Trees" - actually.




Encores

Kecharitomene:
I'm not actually sure if this is the piece they played, but I *think* so. If only because there aren't *that* many all-instrumental pieces, and this was one that I recognized but couldn't name (as such, I'm assuming it's from the new album, which does serve to narrow things down a bit. ;-)

Penelope's Song:
I am so intensely happy that she did this one. :-D Not surprisingly, it was for someone who had died. I had assumed it was for her long-since-drowned fiance, but it was actually dedicated to one of the Snowbirds - a fellow who was killed in, I think, one of the search-and-rescue missions that his regiment (for-which Loreena is an honourary colonel) was involved in a while back. It is beautiful and sad and hopeful all at once, as much about Paradise as Ithaca, I think. :-)

Cymbeline:
For the last encore, she came out alone, just her and her harp, and said "We'll leave the last words to Shakespeare, shall we?" What a lovely way to close. :-)



A note on her stage-banter:
Paul, alas, wasn't all that impressed with what she had to say to the audience (to many "um"s, and a lot of stuff about ancient history).
I, personally, will put up with any amount of "um"s to hear more about my own distant (very distant) ancestors wandering all the way over to China. ;-) So I didn't mind at all. :-)

A note about the audience: There were a couple of boys - hip-hop clothes and reeking of pot, who were just clamoring to be the first into the concert. Which, quite frankly, was adorable. :-)
Paul pointed them out to me. :-)
There was a boy in the row ahead of us, there with his family (I'm guessing he hadn't yet hit twenty, and was probably a good deal younger than that), who appeared to be quite delighted by the description of the celts as being "This bunch of anarchists in Ireland and Scotland and Wales and Brittany and so on". He made me grin.
At the risk of sounding like a twit: It was really nice to see such young men there, listening to her because they actually wanted to be there, not because they'd been dragged in by a girlfriend or a mother (or a wife <*cough*>) or something. It was really quite delightful. :-D


All in all, a wonderful concert, a wonderful mood set and kept. I could have stayed for hours and hours more and still be completely entranced. :-D


If she comes through Ottawa again, I'll definitely be going. :-D