Loreena McKennitt, the Canadian composer whose Celtic music has sold more than 16 million albums, marks thirty years of The Mask and Mirror at the Royal Albert Hall.
Loreena McKennitt, the Canadian composer who has sold more than 16 million albums, performs at the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington on Wednesday 31 March 2027. The concert celebrates 30 years of The Mask and Mirror.
Born in Morden, Manitoba, in 1957 she enrolled at the University of Manitoba to become a veterinarian. She found folk music in Winnipeg instead, and sang at the first Winnipeg Folk Festival in 1974.
She then travelled to Ireland and learned the Celtic harp. Busking at St Lawrence Market in Toronto paid for her first album, Elemental, in 1985, and every record since has appeared on her own label, Quinlan Road.
The Visit and The Mask and Mirror each won a Juno, and The Book of Secrets, with “The Mummers’ Dance”, followed in 1997. Her soprano sets Tennyson and Shakespeare beside traditional ballads.
She has received two Grammy nominations and performed for Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III. The Mask and Mirror, released in 1994, looked through fifteenth-century Spain at the meeting of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, on a journey from Ireland to Galicia, Andalusia and Morocco.
A definitive edition of the album was released on 9 October 2026.