Enya has dedicated her latest album Amarantine to the BBC Northern Ireland producer who introduced her individual ethereal singing style to a worldwide audience.
Tony McAuley, who died at his home in the Glens of Antrim in June 2003, gave the Irish singer her television break when she recorded the music for The Celts series.
Enya subsequently released the soundtrack from the series as her debut album, The Celts, in 1987.
The singer, who is Ireland's best selling solo musician, said McAuley had played an integral role in bringing her music into the public domain.
"He was very important... a great, great friend who got us involved in the first project which was The Celts," she said.
"We had a wonderful time at the BBC, because firstly we were asked to write the music for one episode, but when we had put forward a few pieces, the director, David Richardson, said he wanted us to write the music for the six episodes, which was a great compliment."
McAuley also played an instrumental role in the careers of Paul Brady, the Chieftans and Van Morrison.
In the past, Enya has performed her songs in English, Gaelic, Welsh, Spanish and even Elvish (for the Lord of the Rings soundtrack).
However, her latest album, to be released on 21 November, has stretched her linguistic singing repertoire to the fictional language of Loxian.
After trying to sing the track Water Shows The Hidden Heart in English, Gaelic and Latin, her co-writer Roma Ryan suggested she tried it in Loxian.
"(When) we worked on Lord of the Rings, Roma was working on writing the lyrics in Elvish because of Tolkien's fictional language," she said.
"So when we went to work on the album she suggested, because we were working on this one song and we had great difficulty deciding on what the language was going to be, she suggested creating a fictional language called Loxian, which was absolutely so exciting."
According to the Sunday Times Rich List, Enya is the joint 78th richest person in Ireland with an estimated fortune of 100m euros (£70m).
She was also the world's biggest selling artist in 2001.
However, despite her fame and success the Donegal singer says she still gets excited about creating original music.
She said: "I have a great love of music always had, and to put together this album and kind of lose yourself in the music is really interesting, to be creative and not think of the commercial side of the music, to focus on what you want to say in a song, so the extra bonus is the success."
^ Back to top | BBC Sport Home | BBC Homepage | Contact us | Help | ©
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~35~RS~)