My review of Destiny

[Celtic Chan]

I've decided to change some of my ratings on my review since I've listened to the album about 5 more times since then. Some songs are starting to grow on me.

[bot1tle]

grade school kids could've created a  better stage and lighting was terrible.... definately not CW quality.....

[LisaKellyManiac]

As much as I am in love with Destiny, I can't help but miss the sound of TNJ and SFTH...

It's definitely less "full", but still beautiful.

I for one really like Tir Na Nog and Oonagh's style. My Land and Westering Home are safely on my list of favorites as well. Mairead C and Susan could have gotten better solos. The Whole of the Moon sounds like it could've been written by some fifth graders in a classroom, not sure why CW picked it.

Does anyone know who the new composers are and what happened to David?

[rfcw]

I haven't seen the whole Destiny entirely therefore I can't judge
But by the previews and all it's great energy but the lack of some Celtic Woman if you know what I mean
The continued CW aspect is kind of missing other than Meav being on.
Believe was different too, but went simply the best for a new direction because it continued to draw the Celtic Woman wave to a whole another level. SFTH is the same to me the most beautiful, The Isle of Hope material worked amazingly as a new special even though we heard it on tour before it. NJ & CW are the first important centric part of CW's rise.
This points why a Tenth Anniversary DVD would been greater than Emerald just like IOH came to be SFTH.
Destiny is great but it doesn't compete to the similar theming undergo like Believe as Believe succeeded. As for David this is not his project, he took off a break to pursue other works creations of interests. As for the new composer's name someone else can help all I know is Meav contributed with the making of this show. It's excellent and all but CW going only Irish full throttle is great for one special as this but over all it's also CW not a Ireland festival showcase.

[ShiningBright]

Does anyone know who the new composers are and what happened to David?

The new composer who wrote When You Go and Skylands (and who is probably the new regular composer for CW) is William Andrews. Tír Na nÓg was written by Peter Sage of Santiano, for Oonagh who often collaborates with them - CW performed the song with Oonagh at Santiano's concert in Ireland. Walk Beside Me was written by Mutt Lange. I wonder if that was meant to be a kind of celebrity guest appearance/collaboration, but as a writer instead of as a performer, considering how well-known he is, or if he's going to write more for CW. I'd love that, considering what a gorgeous song it is. And I think his style (or at least the style he used for that song) fits CW better than Mr Andrews'. Then again, When You Go and Skylands are certainly very pretty, but more as an addition to the variety, not as a new standard.

[Sorator]

Another thing worth mentioning about Destiny is the abundance of magical and mythical elements. In the past albums we had very little of these, but now some of the songs clearly talk about them We have pixies in When You Go, the 'elven kiss' in Tir Na Nog and of course Skyrim makes us think of the fantasy world of Elder Scrolls and I See Fire, well, it's part of THe Hobbit soundtrack It would be lovely if some of the future songs would be about Irish legends and myths, what do you think?

Tir Na Nog actually is telling an old Irish story - Oisín in Tir na nÓg. Copy/pasting from Wikipedia:

In Oisín in Tir na nÓg, his most famous echtra or adventure tale, he is visited by a fairy woman called Niamh Chinn Óir (Niamh of the Golden Hair or Head, one of the daughters of Manannán mac Lir, a god of the sea) who announces she loves him and takes him away to Tir na nÓg ("the land of the young", also referred to as Tir Tairngire, "the land of promise"). Their union produces Oisín's famous son, Oscar, and a daughter, Plor na mBan ("Flower of Women"). After what seems to him to be three years Oisín decides to return to Ireland, but 300 years have passed there. Niamh gives him her white horse, Embarr, and warns him not to dismount, because if his feet touch the ground, those 300 years will catch up with him and he will become old and withered. Oisín returns home and finds the hill of Almu, Fionn's home, abandoned and in disrepair. Later, while trying to help some men who were building a road in Gleann na Smól lift a stone out of the way onto a wagon, his girth breaks and he falls to the ground, becoming an old man just as Niamh had forewarned. The horse returns to Tir na nÓg.

So the song Tir Na Nog is sung from the perspective of Niamh, the fae woman trying to convince her human lover to come with her to her world, and then trying to convince him not to leave it. This is especially clear in the last verse of the song, which Eabha sings:

Time won't follow the path we came.
The world you left, it forgot your name.
Stay with me and be mine my love,
Spare my heart the pain.

What I can't figure out is what language the chorus of that song is (it's not Irish), so I don't know what those words mean. Also can't decide if they're saying "scum" or "scun" or "scumn" in "Sha ta co ti oh scum ne rivna" - judging from the videos, Mairead is clearly making an "m", while Oonagh is definitely making an "n"; Susan is sometimes just "n" and sometimes kinda inbetween, and Eabha does some "n" and some "m". That fits with the audio pretty well, too - you mostly hear Mairead's m, but the others aren't entirely matching that - so I don't think it's just a music video lip-synching issue. 

Haven't especially delved into the rest of the album yet (Tir Na Nog caught my attention, heh), but I really didn't like Susan's solos, and I really did like My Land and Siuil A Run. And Eabha is awesome; I've really, really wanted more diversity in CW's sound ever since Orla and Meav left, and now we're getting some of that!

[rfcw]

Haven't especially delved into the rest of the album yet (Tir Na Nog caught my attention, heh), but I really didn't like Susan's solos, and I really did like My Land and Siuil A Run. And Eabha is awesome; I've really, really wanted more diversity in CW's sound ever since Orla and Meav left, and now we're getting some of that!

Whole of the Moon is fine just vision Lisa Kelly but
Sometimes a Prayer will do what is it about you don't like ? I'm curious
Alex will be included as diversity too also no matter how SFTH she did lower range except on tours 2008 & 2015.
Miss Alex and I wish I could find some source anything even a second of her Dulaman performance : (.

[Sorator]

Whole of the Moon is fine just vision Lisa Kelly but
Sometimes a Prayer will do what is it about you don't like ? I'm curious
Alex will be included as diversity too also no matter how SFTH she did lower range except on tours 2008 & 2015.
Miss Alex and I wish I could find some source anything even a second of her Dulaman performance : (.

Whole of the Moon doesn't seem very Lisa Kelly-ish to me, though. The only thing about it would be the "moon" aspect, and Lisa only really did the one song relating to that anyway (though Moon's A Hard Mistress is certainly one of my favorites).

Sometimes A Prayer Will Do is very gospel-y, and that's just not a genre I especially like. *shrug*

Alex sang low parts, yeah, but her voice is still often very bright - when I talk about diversity of sound, I'm not really talking about range (high and low); I'm more talking about tambre (bright vs dark, like how Alex and Lisa K and Susan are very, very bright, partly a musical theatre thing, and Eabha and Orla and to some degree Meav are much darker and smokier). Part of the appeal of Celtic Woman from the start was taking five very different voices and letting them blend for a unique sound, but the group's vocal sound became very, very bright when Meav and Orla left, and it's stayed that way until Eabha. What little I've heard of the group numbers sounds much better with a dark voiced singer in the group again.

In terms of range, CW has almost entirely consisted of sopranos and mezzo-sopranos, with Orla being the only exception that I know of (I think Eabha is a mezzo). Many of them have wide ranges, but they're still high-voiced by nature, and their best notes will still be on the high side.

[ShiningBright]

Sorator, actually Órlagh is a Mezzo-Soprano. Éabha is a Mezzo or an Contralto, that's difficult to say, but I think she's a Mezzo. The other girls are all sopranos, including Lisa K, Susan and Alex. Yes, as for the timbre almost all of them are very bright, except for Éabha, Órlagh, and sometimes Méav and Lynn. And most of them are warm... Lynn, Lisa L, Éabha, Mai C, Hayley and sometimes Órlagh have cooler voices.