Sarah McLachlan | |
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Performer Profile | |
Birth Date | 28 January 1968 |
Hometown | Halifax, Nova Scotia |
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Appearance(s) | 10 Week 9: Semifinals |
Sarah Ann McLachlan, OC OBC is a Canadian singer-songwriter known for her emotional ballads and mezzo-soprano vocal range.
She has been a guest performer in Dancing with the Stars in Season 10. Couples have danced to her songs in other seasons as well.
Career Highlights[]
She played music from a very young age, beginning with the ukulele at age four. She studied classical guitar, classical piano, and voice at the Maritime Conservatory of Music through the curriculum of The Royal Conservatory of Music. At age seventeen, while still a student at Queen Elizabeth High School in Halifax, she fronted a short-lived rock band called The October Game. One of the band's songs, "Grind", credited as a group composition, can be found on the independent Flamingo Records release Out of the Fog and the CD Out of the Fog Too. It has yet to be released elsewhere.
Following The October Game's first concert at Dalhousie University opening for Moev, McLachlan was offered a recording contract with Vancouver-based independent record label Nettwerk by Moev's Mark Jowett. McLachlan's parents insisted she finish high school and complete one year of studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design before moving to Vancouver and embarking on a new life as a recording artist. She finally signed to Nettwerk two years later before having written a single song. The signing with Nettwerk prompted McLachlan to move to Vancouver, British Columbia. There she recorded her first album, Touch, in 1987, which received both critical and commercial success and included the song "Vox". During this period she also contributed to an album by Moev, provided vocals on Manufacture's "As the End Draws Near," and embarked on her first national concert tour as an opening act for The Grapes of Wrath.
Her 1991 album, Solace, was her mainstream breakthrough in Canada, spawning the hit singles "The Path of Thorns (Terms)" and "Into the Fire". Solace also marked the beginning of her partnership with Pierre Marchand. Marchand and McLachlan have been collaborators ever since, with Marchand producing many of McLachlan's albums and occasionally co-writing songs.
As of 2015 she had sold over forty million albums worldwide. McLachlan's best-selling album to date is Surfacing, for which she won two Grammy Awards (out of four nominations) and four Juno Awards. In addition to her personal artistic efforts, she founded the Lilith Fair tour, which showcased female musicians on an unprecedented scale. The Lilith Fair concert tours took place from 1997 to 1999, and resumed in the summer of 2010.
Gallery[]