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Celtic singer-songwriter Loreena McKennitt plays the Lakewood Civic Auditorium on Friday, Nov. 4.

(Ann E. Cutting)

PREVIEW

Loreena McKennitt

When:

8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 4.

Where:

Lakewood Civic Auditorium, 14100 Franklin Ave., on the campus of Lakewood High School.

Tickets:

$42.50 to $55, plus fees, at the box office, Ticketmaster outlets, online at

and by phone at 1-800-745-3000.

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Loreena McKennitt insists she's just an amateur academic with a passion for research, but that's like saying a trip to the moon is the same as a jaunt to 7-Eleven for a slushee.

The sweet-voiced singer who will play Lakewood Civic Auditorium on Friday, Nov. 4, is as much a student of Celtic music as she is an artist. She's gone to great lengths to discover what she can about the genre, and to share that knowledge with others.

"I don't know exactly what it is,'' she said, discussing the ongoing popularity of the genre. "I was caught in the same snare in the late 1970s and early '80s when I was exposed to Celtic music.

"There's something inherently infectious about it,'' she said. "Neuroscientists can explain how certain modalities affect the brain.''

Her own Celtic origins were rooted in traditional music, "mostly Irish, a bit of Scottish and a bit of English,'' she said.

"But in the late '80s, I was starting to try my hand at writing some material,'' McKennitt said. "Then in 1991, I attended an exhibition in Venice, and learned they were more than a collection of anarchists from Scotland and Ireland and Wales.

"I decided [then] that there were a lot of others performing traditional music better than I could, so I set my creative sights on following the history of the Celts,'' McKennitt said. "So a lot of what I've done since 1991 has been almost an act of musical travel writing.''

Emphasis there on travel. Her research included a train trip across Siberia, a region few people usually associate with Celts and the music of the Celtic people. That Venice exhibition included maps that showed the expanse of the Celtic nation, including Siberia, thought to be the origins of the Irish Celts.

"It's just me using that geography as my creative Svengali,'' she said.

With that in mind, McKennitt has embraced the diversity that is within Celtic music, so that her sound often incorporates Eastern and Middle Eastern instrumentation and sounds to build "a more eclectic'' style of music.

"Most of the music that I've been performing for the past 20-odd years has been less traditional, and I've been mixing it up more and more,'' she said.

This particular tour revisits - you'll pardon the expression - her 1991 release "The Visit,'' which sold more than 4 million copies in Canada and went gold - 100,000 copies - in the United States and Great Britain.

The anniversary year gave McKennitt "an occasion to go back and look back.''

For some artists, going back to "old'' music means discovering new things about the music itself. Not so for McKennitt.

"I don't listen to the music much after it's been recorded and released unless I'm exposed to it in somebody else's realm,'' she said. "But this does bring me back to the days when I was in the studio, the imagery of that place and that time.

"I have to say I'm pleased with a lot of the creative choices I made at the time,'' she said.

This tour also is a bit different in that it's merely as a trio, with multi-instrumentalist McKennitt being joined by guitarist Bran Hughes and cellist Caroline Lavelle.

"For so many years, I've toured with a number of band members, sometimes up to seven or eight,'' she said. "Although it's musically exciting, it doesn't allow me to explain some of the stories and history behind the songs.

"This performance is a much more intimate one, not only because there's just three of us onstage, but because I also spend more time on the travels and experiences I've had that shaped the song,'' McKennitt said.

Think of it as an educational travelogue with a soundtrack. Beats a trip to 7-Eleven, any day.