Kim Ruehl: You've made a couple Christmas records. What is it about Christmas music?
Loreena McKennit: It's the period of time around the Christmas festival that is so rich with different kinds of music and musical associations. With this recording, a number of the songs have something overtly to do with Christmas, but I wanted them to [also cover a more broad spectrum] for the season. It seems as though, as the result of Christmas holiday and New Year festivals, there's more music that can be found at this time of year.
What did you do differently this time?
This project came about in a roundabout way because really I've only deliberately undertaken one Christmas recording and that was To Drive the Cold Winter Away. A Winter Garden had some Christmas and winter-related types of songs, but that was really a byproduct of an exploration project we did in 1995. I wanted to audition players for Book of Secrets, which I made in '96-'97. I wanted to find songs we could play to hear those instruments. [That album] was those songs. It was sounding good so I said let's track them and just not spend time cementing them. We felt they were good enough to release as an EP. Over the years, people asked if I'd ever been interested in making it more than an EP. Then, this year, we were going to be rehearsing at Real World studio and I thought this would be a good time to make it a more complete recording. So we added eight more songs this past summer.
When you're asking how I approached it differently, it's hard to apply to this circumstance. I think when I'm working on the other recordings, which are based or inspired by the history of the Celts, there's a process that involves traveling, reading, watching documentaries, speaking with other people, and then putting it into a...sort of travel writing that becomes the CD. This wasn't inspired by the traveling and reading, but by being part of the charm of Christmas music, music generated over the centuries, and [the history of people] playing music together [in winter].
How did you choose the songs for this record?
The first five songs came about from wanting to have a selection of pieces to audition these musicians. I needed a few with percussion, like "Good King Wencesles" or "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." Then I wanted some more ballads like "Seeds of Love," "Coventry Carol"...So when I came to choose material this time, it was building on that. There were those five pieces, and now I wanted different themes in terms of lyrical content and also modalities. I didn't want extremely well-known commercial Christmas carols like "Silent Night," but songs that were less well-known so people would think this is something new or different. I like the thought of being a conduit or bridge for other people's experiences. With something like "The Holly and the Ivy," I always love the lyrics. But the music for that, I thought, was too familiar. I thought there might be a different way of making the imagery more mystical.
Were there others you wanted to do, but they wouldn't fit on here either [because of space or some other reason]?
That's an interesting question because there's another kind of Christmas record I'd love to do, and that's Christmas music from Scandinavia with instruments from that part of the world. Some of that music is linked to the Celtic sound. It's absolutely, shockingly beautiful and not very well-known at all. That's a project I'd love to do that would have a completely different kind of aesthetic. It'd be wonderful to do on location in a rural church in Norway or something and try to paint that cultural landscape and aesthetic.
You mentioned you recorded this in the summer. How do you get in the Christmas spirit in the studio when in July?
It was July 1995 that we recorded A Winter Garden, as is often the case. The Christmas period is often so busy it's not a very practical time to be recording and...It's like anything. You extend your imagination and you conjure up, try to invoke [the Christmas spirit]. I tap into the lyrics or memories associated with certain songs, or projecting my imagination. One can become overly excited on that. I don't know if, whether you're performing those songs in Dec or July, whether it makes a huge difference in how it sounds. There might be slight imagery things, but I don't find it's massively necessary .
Interview conducted Nov. 5, 2008
