FAQ

Any tour dates, standalone performances or other appearances will be found in the Performances section of this website and via the official Loreena McKennitt/Quinlan Road email newsletter. If you are a member of the LM Community, you will be notified as soon as performances are confirmed and ready to be announced. If you are not a member of the LM Community, please check back to the Tour page on our website.

No.

Since Loreena’s music involves a range of musical styles including Celtic, middle-eastern, as well as musical ‘feels’, it often becomes necessary to travel with a number of musicians. For example, during the 2007 tour Loreena was accompanied by nine musicians who played instruments ranging from violin, viola, cello and bass to percussion, kit drums, hurdy-gurdy, guitars, oud and lyra or kemenche.

In different venues, cities and countries, Loreena’s concerts may start at different times. Generally speaking the performance will begin one hour after the doors open. Please check with your local venue for details about when the doors will open.

Loreena’s concert performances are presented in two parts and last approximately 2½ hours.

In most cases, the first half of Loreena’s performance will last for 55 minutes. The intermission generally lasts for 15 to 20 minutes, and the second half of the performance will last for 40 to 50 minutes.

Please note that concerts can change from evening to evening, and unforeseen technical problems or other complications may affect the start time, length of performance and time that the performance ends.

The setlist is not available in advance – we hope, however, that you will be delighted with what you hear on the night you attend. The set is expected to differ slightly from night to night. Tours develop organically and Loreena may decide to alter the setlist as the tour proceeds.

There are no backstage passes available to fans; the backstage area is a secure area reserved for musicians, crew and staff and is not open to the public.

Loreena enjoys meeting friends, fans and concertgoers when time and circumstances permit. However, this is a decision that is made on the night of the concert and it cannot be promised or confirmed in advance.

We recommend that if you wish to have a CD or other item signed, or you simply wish to say hello, that you visit the merchandise area at the conclusion of the concert in order to find out whether Loreena will be greeting fans. We appreciate your understanding if you are told that it is not possible on the evening in question. Please be patient: there may well be a wait.

We are aware that there are fans all over the world who are hoping that Loreena and her band will undertake a performance in their cities. Inevitably, some people will be disappointed.

Although we seek to present concerts wherever there are individuals who would like to see us perform, there are many considerations involved in building a tour. Some of these have to do with availability of venues, or what number of concerts in a region makes logistical and financial sense. We also have to take into account the availability of tour personnel. These factors and more contribute to the shape and scope of a tour.

In the varied mix of activities we undertake at Quinlan Road, one of them is to seek times and ways that we can bring our performances to you, especially to places where we have never been before. We are continuing to look at touring plans for 2009 and it is our hope to expand beyond the countries and cities listed in our 2008 summer tour.

Thank you for your understanding, and thank you for all your wonderful words of support.

Where ever possible, Quinlan Road offers a variety of things for sale at Loreena’s concerts. These include CDs, DVDs, T-shirts and posters. On most occasions we are able to accommodate credit cards as well as cash in the local currency.

Over the years, Loreena’s music has been used in a number of films and television programmes and a small number of advertisements around the world. Unfortunately, that list is too long to make available on this website. If you are trying to identify a song that you think might be performed and/or written by Loreena, you are welcome to try the search engine on this site (if you remember at least a few of the words of the song) or view the full lyrics for each album in our Music section. Additionally, this website offers short sound samples of all of the songs on all of Loreena’s recordings, and you may recognise the track that way.

Nights from the Alhambra is a musical performance captured live in September 2006. It was Loreena’s first in-concert television special, featuring landscapes of her catalogue, from traditional Celtic ballads to literary narratives and highlights from her most recent recording, An Ancient Muse. We are offering Nights from the Alhambra in two distinct packages – you will notice a choice of CD and DVD digipaks. Both packaging formats include identical content, with the DVD video and companion audio on two CDs. Visit the Music section of this website for more information about this DVD.

Full versions of the music videos “The Bonny Swans” and “The Mummers’ Dance” in stereo and 5.1 surround mixes are available as additional content on the DVD No Journey’s End, a half-hour profile of Loreena created especially for American public television. These music videos are not available on the VHS version of No Journey’s End. Visit the Music section for more information.

Sheet music scores for many of Loreena’s compositions are available exclusively from LM Shop as downloadable PDF.

See a sample of our sheet music and download an order form here.
Please note that we accept orders for sheet music by email, as well as by phone, fax or post [Contact Us].

All of the sheet music is arranged for piano, voice and guitar. None of the sheet music is available for specific instruments, with the exception of three songs noted on the order form which have also been scored for the lever harp. Scores are only available in the key in which they were originally performed.

If you have any questions about our sheet music service, do not hesitate to email us at postmaster@quinlanroad.com and we’ll do our best to help.

All of Loreena’s studio album booklets include song lyrics. However, if you’ve misplaced your booklet, or you find the type size hard to read, please be sure to visit the Music section on this site. You can download a PDF of each of Loreena’s album liner notes, and you’ll also find lyrics for all of Loreena’s songs, whether the words were penned by Yeats, Shakespeare, Tennyson or Loreena herself.

LM Shop orders are fulfilled by our partners. During the process of ordering you will be guided to a partner site for check out in your geographic territory. Our shopping carts are optimised for payment by credit card. However, we know that some people prefer to use other methods of payment such as cheque, postal order or money order.

Don’t like online ordering? Aren’t sure how you’d like to pay? Have a question about stock availability or shipping charges? Want to ask us anything else about Quinlan Road CDs or other merchandise? If you would prefer to speak to the Quinlan Road team directly, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will personally assist you to place your order in the manner that best suits you. You can reach us by phone at 1-800-361-7959 (Canada and USA only) or 1-519-273-4491or email us at shopping@quinlanroad.com. We’d be very happy to hear from you.

All of Loreena’s current merchandise can be found on this website in the SHOP section of this website. There is no listing of obsolete or discontinued material.

With regards to DVDs, both Nights from the Alhambra and No Journey’s End are mixed in 5.1 surround sound, and each DVD also provides a menu choice to listen to it in 2.0 Stereo mix.

As for audio discs, many people who have discovered the SACD and DVD-A formats or 5.1 surround mixes have become enthusiastic about their relative merits and have asked us whether we will be supporting these formats in the future.

Historically, we have supported the audiophile audience wherever we can, and feedback we have received suggests that many Loreena fans have an interest in this area. We will continue to recognise the importance of sonic excellence. However, Loreena feels that such new-format options (SACD, DVD-A etc) are best considered at the onset of a creative project rather than applied to recordings retrospectively. That’s not to say that the next studio recording will definitely have a 5.1 module, or will be available as an SACD or SACD Hybrid disc, or a DVD-A, but it will be seriously considered.

With the release of that recording still many months away, and with the rapid change in home audio systems and formats, it is hard to predict what might soon be available to both musicians and listeners.

In remastering Loreena’s studio recordings for our recent reissues series, which we feel go a long way toward satisfying the audiophile listener, it became clear that the master tapes of existing Loreena McKennitt recordings would not necessarily lend themselves to 5.1 versions because of the manner in which the original recordings were built.

There have been 5.1 mixes created of some Loreena McKennitt tracks for cinematic use, but they are not suitable for commercial release and the scrutiny of repeated listening. You will, however, find 5.1 surround audio options on the mixes of “The Bonny Swans” and “The Mummers’ Dance” videos on the DVD of No Journey’s End, which is presently available as a standalone item directly from Quinlan Road.

You will need to send us a request, outlining how you would like to use Loreena’s material on your site, including the address of your website. In general, we do not allow sound clips to be served from websites other than this one. However, all requests will be reviewed by the Quinlan Road team on a case-by-case basis and you will be advised of our decision and the reasoning behind it. Please send your requests to businessaffairs@quinlanroad.com. You should be aware that there may be license fees associated with these requests.

Yes. All such requests should be sent to businessaffairs@quinlanroad.com, where they will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis by the Quinlan Road team. You should be aware that Loreena’s music will need to be licensed for these uses if approval for the use of a piece is granted; in other words, you may need to pay a fee for the use of the recording and composition.

Quinlan Road is an independent, one-artist label, run and owned by Loreena McKennitt. There are no plans to begin representing other artists, now or in the future.

You are welcome to send in appreciations and materials. However, due to the extremely large amount of mail that Loreena receives, it is simply impossible for her to personally read or critique everything that is received. Please do not send any originals or materials that need to be returned to you.

As much as she would like to, time usually does not permit Loreena to collaborate with other artists.

Generally speaking, Loreena seeks out musicians of a particular style and instrument on an as-needed basis. Unfortunately we are no longer in a position to receive unsolicited material. Thank you for understanding.

Send an email to businessaffairs@quinlanroad.com including details of which song you intend to cover and what style of music you or your group produce. A member of the Quinlan Road team will get back to you and let you know if you may proceed.

Send an email to businessaffairs@quinlanroad.com providing details of your organisation, venue or festival with the proposed date of the performance. A member of the Quinlan Road team will respond to you in due course.

In the majority of cases, your radio station should have been serviced directly with Loreena McKennitt CDs by our label partner in your territory. However, if you wish to contact us directly for CDs, please send your request on your station’s letterhead (headed paper) either by email, post or fax. Please tell us about your station and/or the program you represent. We send CDs directly to radio stations but not to private individuals.

If you wish to make such a request, please send an email to press@quinlanroad.com.

Please address your request for press materials, review copies or photos to press@quinlanroad.com.

We have label partners and/or distributors in most territories around the world and, in most cases, retailers will need to order directly from those distributors. However, if you wish to obtain further information about details of our distributor in your territory, stocking Quinlan Road products or obtaining in-store play CDs or posters, please direct your request to sales@quinlanroad.com.

Go to the LM Community section of this website and sign up. Nearly 100,000 people from countries all over the world have joined. They get advance notice of events and ticket sales, as well as newsletters sent via email a few times a year that highlight what’s new at Quinlan Road. Join this unique and evolving community to keep informed.

The volume of correspondence Loreena receives here at Quinlan Road long ago outstripped her capacity to answer all of it personally. Nevertheless, a large majority of it is still seen by her. Please be assured that your correspondence is most welcome and deeply appreciated. Your letter will be read and replied to in a timely fashion; in most cases, the reply will come from a member of Quinlan Road staff.

We do not offer tours of the Quinlan Road offices but Loreena is appreciative of your interest in her working environment. The Quinlan Road office is purely administrational; Loreena’s creative work happens at a number of different places all over the world.

We receive more requests for autographed photos than we can accommodate. However, all photo requests are reviewed on a case-by-case basis. You may direct requests for autographed photos to postmaster@quinlanroad.com, outlining the reason for your request. Please note: we do not respond to requests from autograph collectors.

Quinlan Road receives many more requests for donations to charitable organisations than we are able to grant. However, please feel free to direct your request – with full specifics of your organisation and/or event and what you are asking for – to postmaster@quinlanroad.com.

Although we try to offer information on our website in as many languages as possible, in most cases, Quinlan Road staff are not equipped to read or reply to correspondence in languages other than English or French. We hope that this FAQ and the Loreena McKennitt/Quinlan Road website as a whole will be able to answer most of your questions.

If you do choose to send correspondence to us in a language other than English or French, we will do our best to reply, but please be aware that the volume of correspondence we receive, and the time and cost involved in obtaining translations, means that it is much more difficult for us to respond in a timely and thorough fashion.

While we appreciate your interest in employment with Quinlan Road, we are not a large enough company to solicit potential new employees in this way. We also do not offer internship or work-experience programs at Quinlan Road.

Around 2002, a colleague of mine brought a newspaper article to my attention which focused on an archaeological dig in the vicinity of Gordian, outside of Ankara, which had uncovered Celtic remains. This represented one of the more eastern regions for some of the Celtic tribes, who date back to 500 BC. I visited this site, and as well as an amazing museum in Ankara that was full of Celtic artefacts. Having attended an exhibition on the Celts in Venice in 1991, I was already aware that some tribes had reached this far east. I understand this region would have also been a part of various trade routes, and therefore influential in the extension and evolution of cultures.

I can understand that because there are many themes found within my music which have historical or spiritual dimensions, even political questions within them, they may resonate in different ways for different people. I can also understand the tendency for people to think that ‘I am one of them’ if I attend or am invited to attend one of their events. But this is an incorrect assumption. Just because I may attend a particular event it doesn’t mean I’m a supporter with shared beliefs. I continually find myself interested and curious about all manner of things – even things I may not entirely support or agree with.

In fact, as a rule I refrain from endorsing any political or religious path, for a variety of reasons. On the whole I tend to be a non-club joining person. I am a bit like Groucho Marx when he said, “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”