In 1998 they received an extraordinary letter from Barbra Streisand, who requested their song “Heartstrings” for her wedding. Ann Hampton Callaway wrote lyrics to the instrumental piece, and Barbra Streisand performed it as part of her wedding speech to James Brolin. She later recorded it and released it as her first single from the album “A Love Like Ours”. In her Millennium live- concerts from Las Vegas she released a second recording of it, and also included it in the “Essential Streisand” album in 2002. She kindly released a press statement saying: “I hope the people in America will discover the wonderful music of Secret Garden”.

In 1999 Secret Garden began working on their third album – Dawn of a New Century. Coinciding with the recording they also produced a live concert for PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) in the USA. The two-hour performance was recorded in Lillehammer in mid-Norway and was aired throughout the States and in several other continents. The program is also edited for video and DVD.

Dawn of a New Century includes 3 vocal tracks, two performed by Fionnuala, and “Prayer”, sung by the Scottish singer Karen Matheson. It also contains the epic finale “Dawn of a new century”, featuring the Irish choir Anùna. This piece was performed in the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize concert, aired throughout the world. Once again the album succeeded the two previous albums in the Billboard charts, and once again Secret Garden toured extensively in Asia, Europe, South America and the USA in their busiest schedule so far in their career. Among the activities was a 40 concert tour of the USA in the Fall of 1999. Other performances included a series of three concerts with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in the Queen Elisabeth Hall and a Millennium concert with the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra.