n our last album "Dawn of a New Century" we began a musical collaboration with the Scottish singer Karen Matheson from the group Capercaille. Sean Connery once said after hearing her performance in the film Rob Roy "her voice is touched by God". Her beautiful singing blended so perfectly with our melody "Prayer", so we were delighted to ask her to perform with us again. Here she sings "Gates of Dawn", lyrics by Brendan Graham, and the ballad "Greenwaves" with lyrics by Ann Hampton Callaway. We had previously worked with Ann Hampton Callaway in co-writing the song "I've Dreamed of You" for Barbra Streisand. The lyric to "Greenwaves" is based on the story about the spiritual awakening of Edna - the main character in the Kate Chopin novel "The Awakening" from 1899.

"You Raise Me Up" is recorded by the Irish singer Brian Kennedy, known for his long-time collaboration with Van Morrison, and more recently his Broadway debut with the show "Riverdance". As well as Brian Kennedy, this song features the London Community Gospel Choir and one of their amazing soloists Tracy Campbell-Nation. This great choir was brought to our attention through their recording with Elton John in "The circle of life" from "The Lion King". Instrumental featured soloist in "You raise me up" is the Irish Grand master of Uilleann Pipes: Liam O'Flynn.

Our musical "orbit" also brought us back to Aasa Jinder - the acclaimed Swedish keyharp artist, whom we worked with on our first album "Songs from a secret garden" in 1995. The polarity between the violin and the key harp (Nyckel harpe) very strongly defines the fusion of musical styles between the Nordic and the Celtic in Secret Garden's music.

For the first time we have recorded a duet for violin and cello, featuring the world famous English cellist Julian Lloyd Webber. The title of the piece is "Dolorosa". It was interesting to see how these two individual musical styles interacted in this duet, and gave us a new and challenging experience.

Part of our new development has been to carefully compose a balance between the continuity of "old" players and arrangers, and incorporating new people. By delegating some of the creative responsibilities, we feel we have "tested" and challenged our old methods of production in a positive way. This experiment has given us some new and interesting production and arranging inputs, represented by the two Norwegian keyboard wizards and arranging masters; Kjetil Bjerkestrand and Bjorn Ole Rasch.

The recording was finalised in November 2001. In addition to Windmill Lane studio where the main recording and mixing took place, we worked in Air studios in London, Secret Music studio in Glasgow, Ambience studio in Oslo and in Cross studio in Kristiansand.
Through our web site we sent out an invitation to take part in a musical experiment never done before. We asked people to participate on our new album by recording and sending us a specific piano chord - "the global C". The response was fantastic. We received piano chords from all corners of the world - including Russia, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Korea, China, Japan, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico, USA, UK, Spain, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, Netherlands, Belgium, Czech Republic and Ireland. In this global energy of sound there are 65 different pianos playing together and mixed into the final chord of the piece Elegie.

A day-to-day recording photo journal is available on our web site www.secretgarden.no

Secret Garden has previously released:
·Songs from a Secret Garden (1995)
·White Stones (1997)
·Dawn of a new Century (1999)
·Dreamcatcher (compilation) (2001)
Total album sales: close to 3 million.