Loreena McKennitt and friends will take the stage at Toronto’s Koerner Hall on December 13 and 14 for a concert titled Under A Winter’s Moon. The multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter will also be performing in London’s Centennial Hall on December 12; two earlier dates in Stratford are already sold out.
She’ll be performing a program based on her 2022 album of the same name, one that incorporates Welsh and Indigenous storytelling as well as her trademark Celtic music.
LV spoke to the iconic artist about the concert and music.
Loreena McKennitt
Loreena McKennitt has carved out a unique niche in the music industry with her blend of Celtic folk, pop, and other global music styles. She’s sold more than 14 million albums worldwide that have garnered Gold, Platinum, and multi-Platinum status in 15 countries on four continents. She’s won two JUNO awards, and been nominated for a GRAMMY award twice.
McKennitt was awarded the Order of Canada in 2004, and was appointed Knight of the National Order of Arts and Letters of the Republic of France in 2013.
The original 2022 album was based on a series of performances that were recorded live in the JUNO award winning artist’s home base of Stratford, Ontario in December 2021. It features 15 songs along with readings by Gemini Award-winning actor Cedric Smith, and actor Tom Jackson (note: Jackson is not part of the current concert series).
McKennitt has released an additional two holiday themed tracks on November 21, 2025 to go along with the album, including her version of the Christmas favourite Silent Night, and the English song The King, a celebration of the New Year.
Loreena McKennitt: The Interview
The 2022 album, and the 2021 performances, came out of the COVID pandemic experience.
“Yes, this was a kind of cabin fever type of project,” McKennitt says. “A feeling like we wanted to do something. We wanted something to happen at that point.”
The eclectic program of music and storytelling, surprisingly, was largely a product of happenstance.
“I quickly put together this miscellany of spoken word, and traditional carols, and some less familiar carols that I had recorded in 1987,” Loreena recalls. She remembers performing to half capacity audiences who wore masks.
The album itself was also largely a chance occurrence.
“We record our performances whether they go on to a commercial release or not,” she explains. Once McKennitt and her team heard the results, however, they realized it would make a great memento of the occasion, and the season.
A Blend of Celtic, Welsh & Indigenous
“There is a carol from Ireland that goes back two centuries,” she says of the repertoire. Another, The Wexford Carol, dates back to the 12th century.
“I’ve taken a keen interest in Indigenous culture for quite a number of years,” McKennitt adds. In 1989, she released an album called Parallel Worlds, which also incorporated Indigenous music. “At that time I was reflecting and ruminating on the relationship that the Celts had with the natural world,” she explains. That led to discovering links with global Indigenous cultures.
Ojibway artist Christin Dennis, also known as Gzhiiquot/Fast Moving Cloud, opens the concert with his performance of the story Skywoman.
“In the Indigenous side of things, we drew upon the Skywoman story, which is essentially the Indigenous birth story of Turtle Island.”
Ojibway artist and flautist Jeffrey ‘Red’ George will also play and tell stories during the concert’s first half. “We also invited Jeffrey George […] to play flute and also reflect on his winter memories.”
Actor Cedric Smith, perhaps best known for his role of Alec King in Road to Avonlea, will perform Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales in six parts, interspersed with music during the second half of the concert.
“The Welsh side of course is the Dylan Thomas, the wonderful story of A Child’s Christmas in Wales.”
The blend of music and spoken word was a first for Loreena back in 2021. “Trying to bring a bit more of the spoken word and stories into the seasonal experience,” she says. “This was a chemistry experiment,” she laughs. “It’s not like anything I’ve seen before. It wasn’t intuitive. It has some kind of anchoring in certainly what I’ve done, and what I’m interested in,” she adds.
“I grew up in a small town in Manitoba in the 60s, and I really relate to A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” It struck a chord with her, growing up with similar holiday celebrations that involved big family gatherings.
Storytelling is an element that has more and more poignancy in the modern day, she believes.
“I think that the storytelling does become really important especially in an era where things move so fast.” She notes that the realities of kids today are vastly different than when she grew up. “It can be informative for people to [become] exposed to stories that are so very different.”
Stories like Thomas’ holiday classic, as she points out, involve human agency — skating, making food together, and so on. It offers modern audiences an alternative to their lives in the contemporary landscape.“It seems to be more and more usurped by spectator technical options.”
Loreena McKennitt: Under A Winter’s Moon
She performed the show in 2022 and 2023 in a tour of Ontario that took the band from London and Stratford to Toronto, Ottawa, and Kingston, along with points in between.
“It’s an easy piece to perform, this whole collection of things. And it’s fun.”
She’s looking forward to working with The Bookends, including cellist Caroline Lavelle. “She’s just a really superb cellist and singer in her own right.”
There are three Toronto concerts on December 13 and 14 in Koerner Hall.
Personnel
- Loreena McKennitt, vocals, harp, accordion & keyboards
- Cedric Smith, actor
- Caroline Lavelle, cello & recorders
- Christin Dennis, reading
- Pete Watson, guitar & bouzouki
- Cait Watson, Irish whistle
- Errol Fischer, fiddle
- Romano DiNillo, percussion
Find concert details and tickets here.
Are you looking to promote an event? Have a news tip? Need to know the best events happening this weekend? Send us a note.
#LUDWIGVAN
Get the daily arts news straight to your inbox.