Loreena McKennitt -- The Road Back Home

Loreena McKennitt - The Road Back Home

In November 2023, Loreena announced in an email to the members list the release of a new album.

Extracts from that email and from the official website:

A new album that sprang from Loreena's nostalgic return to her roots this summer will be released in 2024.
As you may remember, she appeared at four Ontario folk festivals in August 2023, performing some of the earliest material from her career - the most traditional of Celtic music. It was a warm-hearted winding back to where it all began.
Accompanied by her long-time musical companion, cellist Caroline Lavelle and other musicians, the concerts were so energizing, so full of inspired spontaneity and a sense of community that they were captured as a field recording which will soon be offered to a global audience as "The Road Back Home".

And from the email announcing the option to pre-order the album:

Loreena's new album, The Road Back Home, is an homage to simpler times, offering comfort, warmth and familiarity. It's like going home.
The album was recorded last summer when Loreena performed at four folk festivals in Ontario, Canada. It's a joyous return to her roots, a kind of musical winding back to the beginning of her career, her earliest days on the folk circuit and its characteristic culture of community.
The Road Back Home is set for release on March 8th - just in time for St. Patrick's Day. It's available on CD, 180-gram black vinyl, via digital music services (including Dolby Atmos) and in retail stores. The album features 10 songs, many of which have remained unrecorded until now.
"There are so many ways to define the meaning of home," says Loreena. "It may well be the structure in which we live, but it can also be the cultural expressions of community which somehow reach into our hearts and souls and draw us together without us completely understanding why."
A group of Celtic musicians (The Bookends) she met in her home base of Stratford accompanied her at the summer folk festivals, along with long-time bandmate cellist Caroline Lavelle.
Loreena and her musical cohort of collaborators are flawlessly captured on this new album - a recording which reflects the deep affection and sense of community these festivals foster in performers and attendees alike. The early songs, the local musicians, the bursts of energy and spontaneity in those performances are what inspired The Road Back Home, which will soon to be on offer to a global audience.