Life After Lilith -- Sara Mclachlan, Coming To The Paramount This Week, Finds Fame After Summer Tour

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Sarah McLachlan and Madeleine Peyroux, 8 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, Paramount Theatre; sold out. -----------------------------------------------------------------

What a difference a Lilith makes.

Sarah McLachlan's career took a dramatic turn last summer when the Vancouver, B.C.-based singer-songwriter organized and headlined The Lilith Fair, a completely sold out, 35-city tour featuring female performers. It was a rousing success.

Already widely respected for her earthy, moody, passionate songs and rich vocal palette, McLachlan suddenly became a media darling, and a radio favorite.

Her heightened profile helped make her late-summer release, "Surfacing," an immediate success, debuting at No. 2 on the Billboard album chart. The latest single from it, the haunting "Building a Mystery," is a Top 20 hit.

Her current tour has been selling out across the country. Both shows here were sold out shortly after tickets went on sale.

McLachlan released her debut album, "Touching," in 1989 and enjoyed her first major commercial success with "Fumbling Toward Ecstasy" in 1994. She has told interviewers that she's glad her newfound Lilith fame came at the ripe old age of 29.

"If I had gotten super famous after the first album," she recently told The Calgary Herald, "I don't think I would've been mentally or emotionally ready to handle that. I didn't have a strong enough self-worth or foundation to deal with that without everybody else's perceptions coming into play so strongly that I would've lost my sense of self.

"Instead, my career has happened in a really nice way, so that it's not been overnight. I've been allowed to get used to it and find ways to deal with it bit by bit."

McLachlan was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was adopted at birth by an expatriate American couple there. She took music lessons as a child and began writing songs and performing in high school.

In 1986, she enrolled at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, hoping to become a jewelry designer. While there, she happened to meet Judy Kaines, an artist, who turned out to be the natural mother who had given her up for adoption. Their relationship has inspired several of McLachlan's songs having to do with issues of abandonment, hard choices and binding relationships.

In addition to Lilith, the other big change in McLachlan's life this year was her marriage to Ashwin Sood, 29, whom she hired as a drummer in 1991 and began dating in 1995. They tied the knot in Jamaica last February and are furnishing their Vancouver home in hopes of soon having children.

McLachlan will be backed here by a six-piece band. Her set, which lasts almost two hours, includes almost all the songs from "Fumbling Toward Ecstasy" and "Surfacing." Some songs have been rearranged, and she performs her most intimate numbers alone at the piano.

Although McLachlan is a recent discovery for many, she's well-known here. She's played here regularly since the early '90s, when she moved to Vancouver. She's appeared at the Moore and 5th Avenue theaters, and was the opening act at the 1992 Endfest. The Lilith Fair's opening date was at the Gorge Amphitheatre last July 5.

Opening her show is multilingual vocalist Madeleine Peyroux (see accompanying preview.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Music sample To hear an excerpt from Sarah McLachlan's new album, "Surfacing," call The Seattle Times InfoLine at 206-464-2000 and enter the category SARA (7272). This is a free call within the local Seattle calling area.