Community and Christmas meet in Loreena McKennitt’s latest album

Loreena McKennitt’s new live album is a homecoming.

The Canadian songwriter and harp player usually travels to far-flung locations – Spain, Morocco, Turkey – to find inspiration for her “eclectic Celtic” music. She’s sold 14 million albums that are rooted in Irish traditions but also include influences spanning from southern Europe to the Far East. 

But in the wake of the pandemic, she yearned to create a Christmas show reminiscent of community concerts from her childhood. “Under a Winter’s Moon,” recorded in December 2021 at Knox Presbyterian Church in Stratford, Ontario, is musically adventurous yet highly accessible. The concert consists of Celtic Christmas carols and seasonal readings. It’s a communal celebration of values that are sometimes neglected in the bustle of the digital age.  

“Gratitude is such an important concept, and I wonder if I consider it enough,” says Ms. McKennitt during a Zoom call. “Also, there’s a lot to learn from the divinity of nature and the endless cycle of life and how the Christ story sits within that. And those sentiments of love and peace and hope and rebirth are so important.”

“Broad ways of thinking”

The recordings for her latest album feature a five-piece band. During “The Holly and the Ivy” and “Good King Wenceslas,” an ebullient combination of Irish whistle, cello, fiddle, and bouzouki makes the more than 100-year-old Knox church sound as lively as a banquet hall. Ms. McKennitt’s shimmering soprano utilizes the natural reverb of the vaulted ceilings on celestial pieces such as “The Wexford Carol” and “Balulalow.” “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” incorporates Middle Eastern modalities and rhythms.  

“She’s been able to take the traditions that are obviously rooted in the Celtic tradition ... but just expanded it to such broad ways of thinking,” says Canadian recording artist Sammy Duke in a Zoom call. The songwriter, who discovered Ms. McKennitt’s 1991 album, “The Visit,” as a child, says her incorporation of textural elements of different cultures has influenced his own albums. “I honestly don’t know if there will ever be another musician that quite sounds like her,” says Mr. Duke. 

“Under a Winter’s Moon” features a prerecorded solo by Ojibway flutist Jeffrey “Red” George. The Indigenous musician also recites “Winter Diamonds,” a poem that expresses gratitude for nature.

“We can’t change the climate if we don’t know the natural world,” says Ms. McKennitt. “And if we don’t know the natural world, we can’t love it. And if you don’t love it, you’re not going to do anything about it.”

The concert program begins with Indigenous actor Tom Jackson reading “The Sky Woman Story,” a tale that describes the creation of North America and its people. 

“Here in Canada, we’re in a pretty deep process of Reconciliation with Indigenous people,” Ms. McKennitt explains. “I knew that Christmas and the birth of Christ was definitely going to be part of this program. And that was so important. At the same time, I was trying to widen everyone’s perspective.”

The second half of “On a Winter’s Night” features actor Cedric Smith performing a live reading of Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” 

For Ms. McKennitt, the piece evokes memories of her own childhood in Manitoba. She recalls cherishing simple things such as the rare gift of an orange in her Christmas stocking. Another source of joy in winter was singing in choirs.

“I remember the annual Christmas concert in the gymnasium,” says the artist. “It would be packed to the rafters with parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles, and we’d be performing ‘O Tannenbaum’ in German and ‘Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming’ and always ending with the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus.”

An act of togetherness

Ms. McKennitt sought to replicate the spirit of those occasions from her small prairie town in her performances inside the Knox church. She was energized by the attentive electricity of the audience members in the pews, many of them attending their first concert since the pandemic lockdowns. 

“They realized that Zoom and all the technological avenues of communication only could go so far,” says the songwriter. “They actually had to have that visceral agora, as our Greek friends would say, [of] being together and hearing and feeling and witnessing the same thing at the same time.”

Ms. McKennitt is an advocate for celebrating rituals and traditions, whether it’s in a Christian church or a Muslim mosque or someplace else, to build the sort of connections that endured in her hometown.

“You have a strength of fabric that happens in a communal sense where people know each other and they’re vested in each other,” she says. “Our mission should be to know each other well, to look after each other.”