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A series of seasonal concerts held at a historic Stratford, Canada, sanctuary in December 2021 were recorded live and are now being released by multi-award-winning Canadian artist Loreena McKennitt as her 16th album, titled Under A Winter's Moon.
The six-panel, two-disc digipak will go on sale November 18, 2022, on her own label, Quinlan Road. The album contains 15 seasonal songs performed by McKennitt, interspersed with seasonal readings by actors Tom Jackson and Cedric Smith, and Ojibway artist and flautist Jeffrey Red George.
The album will also be released in digital format, mixed in Dolby Atmos surround sound.
The album contains seasonal favorites such as "Coventry Carol", "Good King Wenceslas", and the "Huron Carol". The first set begins with Jackson's reading of "The Sky Woman Story", an Indigenous creation story, while the entire second set features Smith's six-part reading of "A Child's Christmas in Wales", a moving and nostalgic prose piece by the late Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
This is also the first time McKennitt has recorded the "Huron Carol". Also known as "'Twas in the Moon of Wintertime", it is the oldest known Canadian Christmas carol. It was written in 1642 by Jean de Brébeuf, a Jesuit missionary in Sainte-Marie among the Huron settlements. Brébeuf's lyrics were originally written in the native language of the Huron-Wendat Indigenous people.
