Loreena McKennitt The Mask and Mirror

Self-produced and boasting an exotic palette of instrumentation from cello and uillean pipes to dumbeg, tabla and oud, Loreena McKennett's fifth album was released in 1994 and has since sold several million copies worldwide. Spanning Spanish, Celtic and Moroccan influences, it follows paths of inspiration from Ireland to Santiago de Compostella to the Middle East. Accompanying musical settings of poems by St. John Of The Cross and Shakespeare are eclectic, richly-textured originals including a seductively dramatic "The Mystic's Dream" and "Marrakesh Night Market." In its journeys, it examines, says Loreena, the questions that echo down the centuries: "Who was God? What is religion, what spirituality? What was revealed and what was concealed...and what was the mask and what the mirror?"