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Your Learning Zone - An Ancient Muse
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List Price: $18.98
Our Price: $7.59
Your Save: $ 11.39 ( 60% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Verve
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0774213121097
Format: Enhanced
Label: Verve
Manufacturer: Verve
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Verve
Release Date: 2006-11-21
Studio: Verve
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: So glad she's back!
Comment: I love Loreena McKennit and here with An Ancient Muse I love her even more! She has such strength and purpose and her passion comes through clearly in all of her songs. Even the instrumentals are extremely moving. I never grow tired of Loreena and I hope she keeps on going strong!
Beautiful...as usual!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent, her best yet!
Comment: I always liked Loreena McKennitt, but it wasn't until I saw her "Nights of the Alhambra" DVD that I became a real fan. Prior to that, I was attracted by her beautiful voice and her haunting arrangements of traditional Celtic music. But after seeing "Alahambra", I realized that she also plays several instruments with virtuousity, and is a great performer! Now, when I listen to her new Ancient Muse DVD, I get more out of it, because it recalls the concert and makes the experience a (virtual) visual as well as an audio treat!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Subtle New Ground
Comment: She explores new ground- but subtly, so it is not surprising that many reviewers missed it- she took the train to Istanbul and her fans are still milling about on the Morocco platform...
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hypnotic shades of the desert and beyond
Comment: I've had this album for about a year, and I can tell you it really is one of my favorites! The blending of musical styles and instruments, not to mention the musical expertise of all the accompaniament is quite unique! Like many others, I am particularly fond of the Middle Eastern influence in such pieces as 'Caravanserai.' To me, pieces like this are written in 'camel time,'which is the cadence of camels crossing the endless desert, going somewhere, but a long, long way to go.... Excellent music for driving long distances, background music, music for contemplation and many other things as well, it is at once mesmerising, soothing and illuminating as well. While it has taken Loreena ten years to come out with something new, when you consider the work and expertise by all parties that has gone into this, it really doesn't surprise me at all; perfection takes a long time to master! I styrongly recommend this one, and if you like it (and I am pretty sure you will!) then try the new 'Night at the Alhambra' as well......
Customer Rating: 
Summary: "this prayer for Mother Earth"
Comment: Fans of Loreena McKennitt will be pleased with this long-awaited album. It has a lot of similarities to her earlier work, but is different enough that I didn't feel like it was a rehash. You'll especially like this if you enjoyed the increasing Middle Eastern influences in McKennitt's last few albums. _An Ancient Muse_ is where the scale tips, more Middle Eastern than Celtic. You might guess that just by the (gorgeous) cover, though!
What I noticed most, besides the sheer beauty of the music, is that the recent years of war have weighed heavily on McKennitt. Several of the songs on _An Ancient Muse_ deal with the theme of war, and the tragedy thereof. "Caravanserai" and "Beneath a Phrygian Sky" mention war explicitly, mourning the "years of war," the "sword and gun and hatred." "Penelope's Song" is less blatant, but as it's about the Greek heroine who waited for her husband to come home from Troy, it fits.
Even when McKennitt returns to the tragic love ballad, with "The English Ladye and the Knight," there's something in the "feel" of the song that seems to focus more on "love one another" than on these two lovers in particular. I don't think it's an accident that McKennitt chose a ballad that features a Crusades death and has the refrain "for Love shall still be lord of all."
This is a beautiful album and I definitely recommend it. It has her usual haunting vocals and entrancing melodies, and seems to possess a subtle but inescapable moral: war is hell, and love is the only hope.
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Editorial Reviews:
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An Ancient Muse is "eclectic celtic" - singer/composer Loreena McKennitt's highly-anticipated first new studio recording in nine years. Taking up where her previous work left off, McKennitt fuses the melodic sensibility of Celtic Balladry with musical traditions from Greece, Turkey, Spain, and beyond. Once heard, never forgotten, Loreena MacKennitt leads the listener on a timeless journey from the Scottish borders to the caravanserais of the Silk Road to the wine-dark seas of Homer's Odyssey. McKennitt's worldwide multi-platinum sales culminated in her most recent album, 1997's The Book of Secrets, which reached #17 on the Billboard Top 200 Chart.
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