Secret Garden

Secret Garden Profile

Fionnuala Sherry and Rolf Lovland make a striking couple. She is a petite Irish beauty and classically trained violinist whose flowing golden locks dance while tearing up her violin like Paganini. He is a soft-spoken and clean-cut handsome Norwegian keyboardist and composer, with a sharp sense of humor and a light Nordic accent to his perfect English. Though she resides in Dublin and he in Oslo, they look straight out of a glamorous Hollywood movie. Together they make up Secret Garden, one of today’s most interesting and captivating musical success stories. Their four studio albums and Best of compilation have sold an impressive 3 million copies worldwide, and their music takes listeners on magical musical adventures to the mysterious parts of Norway and Ireland that most of us have only dreamed about. Their success lies in their lyrical songs and passionate instrumental arrangements that blend zesty doses of traditional Irish and Norwegian sounds with classical styles.

The duo met back in 1994 at the Eurovision Songwriting Contest held that year in Ireland, where both were competing. When they met by chance, they discovered a huge musical connection, and slowly began to work together. Over a period of 9 months from their respective homes, they developed their first album Songs from a Secret Garden. As a result, they were signed to Polygram in Norway, and then represented Norway in the Eurovision contest in ’95. Incidentally, they won—and their careers were launched.

Well, their new careers. Both had impressive musical resumés prior to Secret Garden. Fionnuala (pronounced “fi-NOO-la”) Sherry is a well-trained classical violinist and was a 10-year member of the RTE Concert Orchestra in Ireland. She had also done studio violin work for numerous recording artists including Van Morrison, Sinead O’Conner and Clannad. Rolf Lovland was one of Norway’s most successful songwriters, racking up over 60 chart-topping hits for Norwegian and European pop artists. And that’s not a typo—I did say “60.”

But being a pop songwriter and a symphony member wasn’t all they dreamed to be in their careers. They both felt a longing toward something different. Though she wasn’t exactly sure what that was, Fionnuala wanted to explore music more expressive of herself. Rolf was writing “secret” music more sophisticated than his pop music, that he had no intention of sharing with anyone but himself. But then they met, and their fates changed, and their new identities were realized.

Before NAV first interviewed Secret Garden in 1999, we learned that Lovland was an exchange student in 1972 in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and because of his European soccer skills, was recruited to the football team as a kicker. That year, he kicked the longest field goal in state history—a thirty-seven yarder to beat a rival team. When we called some high school statistical gurus in Oklahoma that year, apparently we kicked up some Oklahoman dust. Numerous articles soon after appeared in newspapers about this weird New Age magazine that called about an exchange student who now was apparently “some kinda’ hot shot” in the music world. Old coaches and players from his ’72 squad were found in various parts of the country and were eager to regurgitate exaggerated stories on the glory days and that “quiet” but “good guy” Rolf Lovland.

Well, the Oklahoma high school field goal record today is actually 63 yards and it is still unclear as to whether Lovland’s kick was the actual record back then or not, though Lovland was just going by what the yearbook said about his now infamous kick. Just a few minutes before we chatted, I faxed over the Oklahoma news clippings I had found regarding the ruckus we stirred up back then. Needless to day, Lovland was tickled to death reading about old friends and coaches reminiscing about him.

Secret Garden Interview

And that is where we began our interview—with Ms. Sherry and Mr. Lovland, who sat at Universal Music’s office in New York City, doing press for their latest and possibly best album to date, Once In a Red Moon.

NAV: Hello Fionnuala and Rolf.

Lovland: Hello Peter, this is the famous football kicker.

Sherry: Gosh we were laughing at those articles. The fact that they are talking about this strange Norwegian guy but nobody can put the two together between Rolf and Secret Garden is what is so funny. We hope that it inspired Forrest Gump (laughs).

NAV: Well, I figured we’d get a laugh out of all this. Anyway, what brings you to the states? I didn’t see you were touring?

Sherry: No we’re not touring, but we are here to create awareness for the new album Once In a Red Moon. We wanted to let everyone know we’ve been in isolation for the last two years working on this album, and were now ready to face the world again.

NAV: You haven’t toured in 4 years here, is that right? Does it just take too much out of you to tour the States?

Sherry: No, it is really nothing to do with us. We just love to tour and we did tour here in ’99. It is really hard for us to find promoters willing to take us on. We’re an eight-piece band, and it’s big enough to take on the road, but promoters are not in the risk business. We can’t wait to get back touring, and our manager is working on it trying to see what can get set up. We really are hoping and praying that something can be put together.

NAV: I know you used to play Border’s stores here a lot.

Lovland: We were just talking about that at lunch today. It turned out to be very good for us. We met and connected with our audience there. That is exactly who our audience is.

Sherry: We are grateful to them. But Border’s said they are not really interested in doing these kinds of showcases anymore. But we really enjoyed doing it.

NAV: How do you split your time throughout the year?

Lovland: Well it depends on what year.

Sherry: This last year was one of the first years I spent almost the whole time in Ireland, since we recorded most of the album there—except maybe a few bits and pieces—but that was unusual. Generally, all the creative and pre-working things are done in Norway. And apart from that, I do a little more traveling than Rolf since I’m flying over to Norway a lot to catch up with him.

NAV: You’ve been asked a million times how you met, and I know it was at the Eurovision contest. But we don’t have a contest like that here in the states. Can you tell me what it is exactly?

Lovland: It’s been an annual thing since 1955. It’s held in the country of the winner from the year before, so it circulates. Most European countries are in it. There has been some significant acts that have come out of it—like ABBA for example.

Sherry: And Celine Dion.

Rolf: That’s right. Before she became an American-based artist, she represented Switzerland that year. Lots of others too—Cliff Richard represented the U.K. . .

Sherry: I think the only way for someone in America to relate to the size of the contest is that it’s like that football final you have here.

NAV: The Superbowl. . .

Sherry: Right. About 350 million people on average watch it. So it is just an enormous TV event. Winning it was big for us.

NAV: You’ve sold 3 million records in the world. That’s a lot. I presume you must get airplay everywhere in Europe (or maybe the world) but not so much here in the states, unless it is a specialty “New Age” hour. Does America’s “Top 20 mainstream” way of music perplex you as Europeans?

Sherry: Well, radio airplay here in the states is very limited for us. We’ve just come from England. And our new song “You Lift Me Up” from the new album is the most requested song on the BBC right now. But here, it’s hard to come in as an overseas act. We’ve got to think a little differently. We need alternative ways to get established in the market because the normal market is unavailable.

NAV: I presume you may get mobbed as superstars in places outside the U.S., no?

Sherry: Its kinda’ fun to arrive in China or Korea. And yes, there are TV cameras and press there, and crowds outside the big stadiums in Shanghai waiting for us to perform. So it is very special and fun for us there.

Lovland: Someone at lunch today pointed at me and said “That’s the guy who kicked a 37-yard field goal back in ’72.” [laughing]

NAV: You know Rolf, if this music thing doesn’t work out, there is always the NFL here in the States.

Lovland: Yes, I’ll keep that in mind.

NAV: Let’s talk about the term “New Age.” I read in a Wall Street Journal article in ’99 that you said (probably lightheartedly) that when you were signed to a New Age label, you had images of pyramids, crystals and people channeling through dolphins. Has your imaged changed of New Age, for better or worse?

Lovland: We are labeled so differently and covered so differently in various parts of the world. In Germany, there was this techno group that covered one of our songs, at the exact same time Barbra Streisand covered a song, and our music was also on a television series. Then there are opera and classical versions of our songs, so we’ve given up on being concerned about being labeled. As an artist, you really shouldn’t try to meet anyone’s expectations about what type of music this is. Maybe that is a healthy thing—that we are letting the marketing thing live in a different world. We should be on the other side of things.

NAV: Well, I ask, because depending on the store, I see you in Celtic sections, New Age or International sections. I was just curious how you saw yourselves.

Lovland: We just came back from Japan, and very much to our surprise they call it “healing” music. That is strange for us, because we have to defend ‘why our music is healing.’ I didn’t really plan for this to be healing music, but if you say so. . . But I guess it all points at one thing — that there is a spiritual quality in our music. And that is good, because that is what’s important to us. We think that’s where art should be, and we should be able to inspire and to share emotions in our music.

NAV: Did you get your name from Frances Hodgson Burnett book Secret Garden?

Sherry: We came up with it actually, because two days before we were supposed to go on stage at the Eurovision contest, we needed a name. The whole year we were working on the material, we kept referring to the music as “secret music.” Rolf had been working on a lot of this music since ’78. He had been writing a lot of pop music for other artists, but this type of music was for himself. So it was his kind of private music. And it was important to us to find a title that had a descriptive quality and an organic sense to it—something that can grow and change.

NAV: When we chatted with you years ago after your first album, you told us you sent DAT tapes back and forth and played over the phone before getting together? What are the logistics now of working on an album? With your success, has that changed?

Lovland: We took a lot of time for this album developing the framework for Once In a Red Moon. I do most of the writing when I’m home and I’m alone. Then we get together at an earliest stage as possible. When we feel we’re ready to get into the arranging and developing the ideas, we normally spend a couple of weeks in the studio in Norway and try to get through a few pieces.

Sherry: You know we’re only a short plane ride away from working together. But the difference this time—and we still had the same amount of e-mails and phone calls, and me coming over, and then studio time—but this album was different. But in our meetings before this album, we got back into the frame of mind as to how to create something special. We don’t want to turn out another album just for the sake of it. So you have far more opinions flying at you from every corner because everyone else thinks they know what is best in terms of what is right for their market. And that is a difficult and dangerous road to go down. So Rolf and I had to batten-down-the-hatches more so this time, and find the inspiration and rekindle the passion and joy in the music. And it was hard not to use the security blanket of reusing sounds and things we’ve done before. So we allowed ourselves to invite new people in, and doing so challenged the way we hear new sounds. But that is where the really good stuff can come out.

NAV: Rolf, it is said that the Secret Garden sound is a cross between Celtic and Norwegian musics. We know Celtic, but outside of Greig, I think most people would have a hard time describing what a Norwegian sound is. Can you elaborate on it?

Lovland: It’s a cross between Grieg and Ah-Ha. [laughs]. You know, it’s very folk orientated. Even Grieg, his pieces are tunes that were handed down the generations and he cultivated these pieces to concert level. To describe it though, it is a little darker and more melancholy than the Celtic thing. We weren’t out on a mission to prove anything, but when we started Secret Garden, we discovered that we had a lot in common through our roots in our respective music.

NAV: Let’s chat more about the new album. There is a lot of guests on this one.

Sherry: It wasn’t really planned at all this way. The song “You Raise Me Up” for instance, when we recorded that, was just violin and it was lovely—if I say so myself [laughing]. But we were listening to it, and there was something left unsaid, and you keep going, and then you think we need a choir, then a gospel choir. It just grew and grew and grew. If you said to us a year ago, we were going to have this song with two choirs including a gospel choir, and a female and male singer, we would have laughed at you. It is just allowing our minds to be open enough.

NAV: I thought it was a great idea to have your fans send in a C chord for the end of “Elegie.” Did that take a lot of work to prepare? I presume not everyone was on the 440 tuning system. Lovland: It was actually better than you’d expect. We didn’t try to reach a professional audience on this. We wanted it to be a real human thing for others to participate in the album, and mainly for the energy of it, as opposed to the music side of it. But we were able to use almost every one—all but two or three of them we just couldn’t use, and we used 66 of them—and we received them recorded on mini-discs, CDs, wave files, and DATS, so we just edited them into Pro Tools. But we described to our fans which octave, how long to sustain the chord, etc. The idea wasn’t to make this professional sounding.

NAV: Several of the pieces on Once In a Red Moon were recorded on first takes. Which ones—I’d like to take a closer listen? That’s got to be a little unnerving...

Sherry: I’ll tell you exactly—“Belonging.” The violin recording on that one and “Elegie,” and the very opening violin passages of “You Raise Me Up.” It was very scary to me. I usually want 50 or 60 takes. But we discovered that with these first takes, as a soloist you discover that you bring in the listener in a different way. They say that with actors too. You can do a scene 20 times, but there was a spark in the first take that wasn’t on the second one. And we knew with these takes that they could have been more polished, but there was something we heard in the wrong that was just right.

NAV: Rolf, you were a very successful pop song writer. Do you have a different “Secret Garden” songwriting face you wear, or is Secret Garden music the kind of music you’re writing these days?

Lovland: I know that if I hadn’t had my career writing pop songs in Europe, I wouldn’t have had this music today. I grew out of that. I needed to have music that was secret in my heart. I didn’t have a need though to express this music publicly. I wrote them for very pure reasons. So this is how I write music. I don’t have a need to write any other music than this. It’s straight from my soul.

NAV: Are you going to make us wait 3 years again for a studio album?

Lovland: You know, maybe. I don’t think it is a point of making as much as you can. It has to be important enough. This one took two years. One year of writing, one year of producing it. And I think that is the place where we want to be. Unless a project or something came up—like a film score—I don’t know.

NAV: Have you been asked to do a film score?

Lovland: Well, yes and no. The beginning of this album came from an invitation to write music for a film. It was based on a script here in the states and it was very good, and we were very inspired by it, and three or four of the songs from the new album were meant to be as part of that score, but the film never materialized, so we decided to go ahead with the music as an independent album. But that is one of our dreams, if the right story came along. We’d love to do that.

Secret Garden Discography

Albums:

• (1996) Songs from a Secret Garden
• (1997) White Stones
• (1999) Dawn of a New Century
• (1999) White Stone [Bonus Track]
• (2001) Dreamcatcher
• (2001) Once in a Red Moon
• (2005) Earthsongs
• (2005) Earthsongs [Bonus DVD]

Compilations:

• (2004) 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Secret Garden
• (2004) Ultimate Secret Garden
• (2007) 1996-2006

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