The West Australian TODAY Friday December 17 1999 - Page 9

Music today - Edited by Ara Jansen

Celtic
    gold

Losing her fiance in a boating accident has devastated Celtic star Loreena McKennitt. She talks to RAY PURVIS about how the tragedy has affected her music and her career.

Loreena McKennitt: "I'd recorded The Book Of Secrets at Real World so everybody there was really friendly and supportive. I'd just arrived from Canada to start mixing the live tapes when I got the phone call at 3am."

	At the very height of her career, fate has dealt international Celtic-music star Loreena McKennitt a cruel blow. Her dreams were dashed by the loss of her fiance in a boating accident only months before they were due to get married. The tragedy has affected her so deeply that she might never tourn again.

	Though you won't find her name in the encyclopaedias of world music, the red-haired Canadian singer songwriter is one of the topselling artists in the burgeoning world of Celtic music. Her albums sell by the millions and she is as much a household name in Europe and America as Rverdance or The Corrs.  Her last three albums - The Visit, The Mask And Mirror and The Book Of Secrets - have achieved gold status in Australia.

	Improbable as it sounds, the Canadian Celtic-music superstar grew up in the prairie town of Morden, Manitoba, and was initiated into the delights of Scottish, Irish and English traditional music at Sunday evening sessions at a local folk club in Winnipeg. Members of the club would bring back from their travels albums by Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention and Alan Stivell. She started to record her own music and in 1990 was signed by Warner Bros.

	In July last year, just as she was about to start work mixing her first live album at Peter Gabriel's Real World studios in rural England, she received a phone call telling her that her fiance Ronald Rees, 28 - whom she was planning to marry after she finished the album - his brother Richard and a companion Gregory Cook were missing, presumed drowned, in a boating mishap on Lake Ontario. Rees's body was found the next day but the other two bodies were never recovered.

	"I'd recorded The Book of Secrets at Real World so everybody there was really friendly and supportive. I'd just arrived from Canada to start mixing the live tapes when I got the phone call at 3am," says the personable  multi-instrumentalist speaking from her home, just outside Toronto, in Stratford, Ontario.

	"I bolted out of there, leaving everything and headed back to Canada. . ." Her-words falter and it's clear she's still devastated, by the events of 18 months ago.

	It's only because of the passage of time, along with her desire to generate funds for the Cook-Rees Memorial Fund - at least $10 from every copy of her new double-CD Live in Paris and Toronto goes towards a a Canadian water search and safety charity (except in Turkey where the money goes to earthquake relief) - that she is prepared to discuss the death of her fiance and the release of the live CD.

	"When the families were making arrangements for the memorial service, we felt that something positive - a living tribute to these extraordinary three men - was appropriate," she says.

	"That's where the idea of setting up a fund serving the purpose of water safety education could address some of the issues that surrounded the accident."

	A publicist for her company, Quinlan Road, says sales of McKennitt's lavishly packaged album could reasonably be expected to exceed 100,000 copies, generating more than $1 million for the memorial fund. The album was originally only available trough her mailing list and Web site (www.quinlanroad.com) but now "a patchwork quilt" of distribution deals have been finalised with countries around the world.

	McKennitt is the exact opposite of a tell-all celebrity. Her music weaves myths and mystique around poetic lyrics and gentle Celtic melodies. But away from the spotlight she is very much a private, 
hands-on, self-made business woman.

	She manages her own career with offices in Toronto and London and a staff of 14. Through her company Quinlan she coordinates the distribution of her music around the world.

	Live in Paris And Toronto was recorded during McKennitt's 1998 tour of Europe and North America in support of her three-million-selling seventh album, The Book of Secrets. The success of the single The Mummers' Dance in the US had taken her profile up a notch.

	"This tour was really a drop in the bucket," she says. "It was only 33 dates and was a gesture to the touring we could have done to properly support that recording.

	"It was only at the last moment that I decided to go out because I was quite anxious to shift the emphasis of my time to my personal life rather than my career. I'd been building my career in this very focused way since 1985 ,and I just needed to take a break because of this relationship 1 was in with Ron.

	"I was planning big things . . . (voice fades) ... I didn't want that relationship to be jeopardised by me having to do everything that had to be done for my work. My career had already far surpassed anything I could've hoped."

	After the memorial fund was established, McKennitt realised that the live album she had earlier abandoned at Real World could generate income for the fund. She says her first impulse was to leave the tapes in the can rather than revive the memories of the accident.

	"It was really hard to go back to England to work on the album because of the proximity - of the tour to the accident. Ron and his family had been at Massey Hall on the Sunday night where we recorded the Toronto concert. Listening to those tapes it was hard not to keep going back to that night ... but you soldier on," she says.

	The word is that Loreena has been so badly shaken-up by her fiance's death that she has given up touring.

	"I haven't been in a strong position to predict what will happen," she says. "It takes a long time to recover from something unexpected like this so Lhaven't wanted to put myself in any position of making firm plans down the road."

	McKennitt has promotional commitments for the album until Christmas and as the main focus of The Cook-Rees Memorial Fund she'll continue to spend time with the Canadian Coast Guard and lifesaving societies.

	"Although this relationship was the key for me taking time off from my career, 1 still feel that I need a break to try to be a more balanced human being. I just need to spend time with my friends and family and learn how to cook, sit at home with my books and put some curtains on my windows," she says.