Nov 7, 2013
Podcast 391 is re-arranged and re-edited from BigO's posting this summer:
These tracks come from a radio webcast featuring highlights from two concerts that were part of this year’s Luminato Festival. These concerts celebrated the career of Joni Mitchell and pre-empted her 70th birthday which will be in November. These shows are significant because they marked Joni’s first time on the stage since 2008. She had said initially that she would not appear at the festival (she doesn’t like these kind of things, you know?). Later it was announced that she would perform a reading of “This Rain, This Rain,” an adaptation of a poem by Emily Carr, with folks like Herbie Hancock, etc. backing her.
In addition to Joni, many other prominent musicians performed. These included Glen Hansard, Esperanza Spalding, Herbie Hancock and a host of others. Although these are just highlights and NOT a full concert, they provide an enjoyable listen. Plus, they are historically significant in Joni’s career. Could this be her last hurrah or maybe the start of something? Anyway, she has a new ballet coming in May 2014 so her name may appear some more…
Brad Wheeler wrote in The Globe And Mail:
Onstage at Massey, where she followed performances of her material by a cast of singers (Glen Hansard, Liam Titcomb, Rufus Wainwright, Lizz Wright, Kathleen Edwards and Cold Specks’s Al Spx), Mitchell’s range was revealed as greatly reduced. She blames the vocal decline on Morgellons syndrome, not age or chain-smoking. Whatever the cause, there was grace to the way she managed within her lower, limited register.