Deborah Cooke: Author

I’ve been listening to a pair of cd’s lately and that’s kind of surprising. I do tend to get a suite of cds in there and listen to them a thousand times – more or less – before changing them out, but that’s not the surprising part.

The odd bit is that this is a concert cd set.

I don’t really like concert cd’s. I like concerts and I like studio cd’s. They’re different beasties, one more spontaneous and one more controlled. I like each for what they are – kind of like books and movies of books – but don’t usually listen to concert cd’s. Mr. C. snagged this set for me as a gift, though, and I’m quite hooked.

What is it? It’s Loreena McKennitt’s NIGHTS AT THE ALHAMBRA. Luscious eye candy on the jewel box, too. I do think it would be really cool to hear a concert at the Alhambra, especially an LM concert. So, maybe I like this because it’s a chance to live vicariously.

The first time I ever heard LM’s music had to have been about 20 years ago, when I saw a screening of a National Film Board movie called THE BURNING TIMES. Her music was on the soundtrack. It’s quite a haunting film, if you ever have the chance to see it – it’s about the pogroms against accused witches in Europe and is quite shocking. (Because witches were charged as heretics, under ecclesiastical law, anyone found guilty would be burned to death, hence the movie’s title.) By the time I got back to school to work on my medieval history degree, a lot of the raw numbers were in dispute – smaller than the film states – but the reality of those hunts is unquestionable. Her music was perfect for the film. I’ve been a fan ever since and regularly slide her cd’s into my musical rotation.

Maybe my liking this concert cd set was a gimme.

The only thing I don’t love is that the version of “The Lady of Shalott”, which is an LM song I adore to bits – it’s Tennyson’s poem set to music essentially – is much shorter on the concert version. I love the whole tangled mess of the studio version of the song, and would (in an ideal world) have encouraged her to go with ALL of the Tennyson poem instead of big chunks. It would have filled an album side that way, and I would have adored it.

But that’s just me.

It’s a really good cd set. There’s a dvd of the concert too, but ever the Luddite, I haven’t gotten around to tossing that up on the screen. I’m just listening so far and liking it a lot.

What are you listening to these days?