Despite what sounded like a pretty full day, Sarah McLachlan sat down after her soundcheck with a few journalists, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend.

Having just wrapped a tour accompanied by a symphony, McLachlan is playing the main stage on the Plains of Abraham tonight with past CM cover artist (and one of my faves) Kathleen Edwards (video interview coming up). “This is a different set list,” she says, comparing the two types of shows. “We took out some of the softer stuff and put in as much of the rockin’ stuff as I have which, you know (laughs), is all relative.”

She also spoke about life as a business woman and philanthropist lately, particularly about her newly-launched Sarah McLachlan School of Music in Vancouver, which is a terrific and timely cause to be supporting.

Hearing part of her soundcheck before the interview, I noticed that some of the arrangements of her better-known tunes were arranged rather differently than on-record and had to ask about what informs the decision to change things up. “I’ve been playing a lot of these songs for a long time and they’ve gone through many different incarnations,” she says, offering some examples: “A song like ‘Path Of Thorns’ I’ve stripped right back down. We’ve done it every way imaginable, but tonight we’re going to go totally acoustic.” For her song “Fear,” however, which she hasn’t played in this kind of setting in a long time, she’s decided to “incorporate some of the string arrangements being played with the symphony and added them on tonight, via technology.”

“It’s more engaging for the fans to hear a song they know and love in a different way,” she continues, “whether it’s stripped-down or lusher and larger than on the album.” She also notes that to playing to this many people (tens of thousands are expected to join her on the Plains tonight), you really have to make the music “larger than life” to fill the space. “You want there to be that closeness and inclusiveness,” she adds, “but still has to be a bit grand, too.”

Asked by another journalist to name the song closest to her, McLachlan admits that changes from day-to-day. “If I had to name one, though, on a most consistent basis, I think it’s ‘Angel’ – me and everybody else,” she laughs. “It just always feels good – like I can lose myself in it every time. That’s one of my favourite things about singing and making music is getting lost in it, and hopefully, getting lost with everybody else.”

Even just from the sampling to which we were treated during soundcheck, I think that’s likely to be the case later tonight.