"With 14 million albums sold, a pair of Juno Awards and two Grammy nominations, Loreena McKennitt is celebrating the 30th anniversary of her singular career as an artist known for her groundbreaking blend of Celtic sounds and World Beat.
A successful self-managed maverick since her early days busking on the streets of Toronto, McKennitt established her own Quinlan Road label and publishing company and has produced albums in various locales including a barn in Southern Ontario, a Benedictine monastery in Ireland and Peter Gabriel s Real World Studio in England, where she recorded four of her albums. Her releases include seven studio recordings, three seasonal recordings, and a live inconcert DVD from the Alhambra in Spain. She garnered double-platinum honors for 1997 s The Book of Secrets and its Top 20 crossover radio hit, The Mummers Dance.
Ms. McKennitt s extensive traveling in pursuit of the history of the Celts, from Mongolia and China to Turkey and Siberia, has shaped her distinctive eclectic Celtic sound, which marries Eastern, Middle Eastern and Celtic musical traditions with her own lyrics and those by great poets like Shakespeare, W.B. Yeats and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
The Journey So Far - The Best of Loreena McKennitt features a selection of 12 fan favorites curated by McKennitt herself, including The Mummers Dance and Bonny Portmore, a traditional Irish folk song included on the soundtrack to Highlander III The Sorcerer, as well as Dante s Prayer, which led to her citation in Dan Brown s best-selling Inferno. The set also includes The Mystic s Dream, which was used extensively in The Mists of Avalon, a critically acclaimed mini-series starring Anjelica Huston."