Taking the stage with an orchestra wasn’t something Sarah McLachlan was eager to do.
“I had a terrible experience many years ago at the Vatican in Rome playing for the pope — that’s another long story,” she said and laughed. “It was with a symphony there, and it was just an awful experience; everything went wrong that could have possibly gone wrong, and it left a very bad taste in my mouth.”
Her agent persisted and convinced her to try it again last summer.
“I did four shows and I fell in love with it. It’s so amazing to have that incredible surge and power behind me,” McLachlan said during a call from her home in Vancouver, British Columbia.
“I’ve been playing a lot of these songs for many years; to be able to reinvent them like this is really thrilling.”
“Possession,” “Sweet Surrender,” “Fallen” and “Loving You Is Easy” are songs the Canadian superstar may perform when her symphony tour stops at the Toledo Zoo for a 7:30 p.m. concert June 27, 2012. Tickets are $50.50 or $70.50.
Her music resonates with the masses. Think “I Will Remember You” and “Angel.”
“I’m always surprised that so many people love my music and so many people can take something that I created and make it their own, which is really one of the greatest validations one can have as an artist. That people come up to me all the time and say this song has done so much for them, it’s helped them through a hard time, you know, because that’s what music is.
“For me, it’s so powerful and it’s such a cathartic thing to listen to music, to play music, and it’s helped me through so many hard times,” McLachlan said.
That power inspired her to start the Sarah McLachlan School of Music, a free program for youth in Vancouver who can’t aff ord music lessons. Th e goal: encourage confi dence and creativity.
“I really feel like music saved mylife in a lot of ways,” the singer-songwriter said. “There were a lot of pretty tough girls in my school, and I became a target because I cried easily. I had no support at home. I was pretty much on my own with it.
“So I just disappeared into music, and I knew instinctively that I was really good at it. It felt really good; it made me feel good; it made me feel that I had something worthy to offer.
