Secret Garden

Secret Garden

LUSH LIFE

Secret Garden Opens Doors
The secret's out about Secret Garden. Audiences far and wide are being lured by the smooth, seductive blend of classical, Celtic, and lyrical pop music created by Norwegian composer Rolf Lovland and Irish violinist Fionnuala Sherry. DAWN OF A NEW CENTURY, Secret Garden's third album, was released in April 1999 and immediately zoomed up Billboard's New Age chart. Andrew Farach-Colton, barnesandnoble.com's classical music editor, caught up with the duo in New York City, where they stopped over after touring East Asia.

Barnesandnoble.com: Your music is so lush and richly textured. How do you put it all together?

Rolf Lovland: When I write, I always have some sort of vision that takes me through to production. Fionnuala comes into the process very early on and we start to develop what the performance dimension will be.

Production is a big challenge because it's generally not a friendly place for creativity or the emotional side of music. The perfect version is in your head, and you have to protect that through months of working in a studio. bn: You've both had classical training. How does that influence your music?

Fionnuala Sherry:There are lots of classical elements in our music; I think that's easy to hear. The fact that we use a full orchestra is very important to us. Synthesized strings can never take the place of a live orchestra

And Rolf is influenced by Edvard Grieg, Norway's most famous composer. Grieg took his music from folk tunes, and I bring some of sounds with me from Ireland. The Secret Garden sound comes from our shared backgrounds and cultures. This kind of stylistic mix has happened before: Bartók, Janácek, and Brahms did it. Melody is important in all these composers' music. We start with melody, too -- pure, raw melody. It's like starting with a blank canvas. A melody has its own destiny, its own path.

bn: Yet in the past composers used classical music to legitimize folk music. Today folk music doesn't need outside validation.

FS: That's right. All over the world, people are beginning to believe that folk music is the true stamp of a culture and identity. Maybe it's a backlash because today everything, everywhere is so mass-produced. Even in China you see MacDonalds, T.G.I.Fridays, and Coca Cola. People need melodies and the emotions that these melodies can trigger.

bn: People are also hungry for the music of distant cultures.

RL: Maybe they're all related? There's something about traditional music that comes from the need to express yourself. The melodies are very emotionally driven.

bn: Fionnuala, is your playing more classical or Celtic?

FS: I feel as if I'm creating my own way of playing. I'm really not a traditional Celtic fiddler; that's a very different technique of playing. I was trained classically, and I've studied a good chunk of the repertory. But I was never a happy as a classical player. What I don't admire about classical music is that so much of the virtuoso style comes at the cost of emotions. I needed some way of expressing myself, and when I met Rolf and had the opportunity to play with him, I suddenly felt: "Okay! Now I can be me!"

bn: What do you listen to for fun?

FS:I think the CD I've played most in the past year is the soundtrack to "Schindler's List." I love Itzhak Perlman's playing. He's got that real emotional quality. I like to listen to all types of classical music, but the music that always appeals to me is really emotional stuff. The slushier the tune the better! I love opera. I used to play in an orchestra pit. We'd do the same operas -- "Tosca" and "La Boh&eagrave;me" -- night after night. And even though I couldn't see what was happening on the stage, the music had this tremendous emotional impact on me, which shows just how powerful it is.

bn: What comes after DAWN OF A NEW CENTURY?

FS: We haven't opened that door yet. As soon as we finished production of DAWN OF A NEW CENTURY, we went on tour -- so we're a bit fried at the moment. [laughs]

RL: We're so committed and so passionate about our work; once we start, there's no stopping.

FS: Of course, there's more to come, but we have to be ready.