The singer-songwriter’s first announced concert in more than 20 years was a nearly-three-hour reimagining of her catalog that showcased her evolving, rich voice and her ever-sharp wit.
“You’re stardust, and golden,” a beaming Joni Mitchell told a crowd of more than 20,000 on Saturday night at the scenic Washington venue the Gorge Amphitheater, during her first ticketed live performance in more than 20 years.
Mitchell, 79, was quoting “Woodstock,” the song she’d written in 1969 in the heady days after the culture-shifting festival, but she was now describing a more modern concert phenomenon: a sea of lights from cellphones held aloft in the dark. Many performers have probably become jaded by the sight, but that is how long it had been since Mitchell played a proper gig: The image of cellphones illuminating an arena was, to her, unfamiliar and inspiring. “You look like a fallen constellation,” she told the crowd, ad-libbing some poetry. It was but one miracle in a night spoiling with them.
Last July, Mitchell stunned the music world when she made a surprise appearance at the Newport Folk Festival, her first public performance since a near-fatal brain aneurysm in 2015. That 13-song set at Newport had been called a “Joni Jam,” organized by the singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile and meant to replicate the loose, wine-fueled sessions that Mitchell has hosted for other musicians in her California living room in recent years. Newport had been a show of resilience — here was a woman who’d had to relearn how to speak, singing — but also one of intergenerational support. “She’s doing something very, very brave right now for you guys,” Carlile told the festival audience. “This is a trust fall.”
But Saturday night’s performance at the Gorge — capping the second day of Carlile’s Echoes Through the Canyon festival — was something else entirely. It was, for one thing, a jam-band-worthy marathon: nearly three hours, 24 songs, including an encore during which Mitchell played electric guitar. (Carlile, 42, who has been championing her idol’s return, joked with Mitchell, “You’re always the last one up.”)
Above all, though, it was a resurrection. After the first few songs — including rousing, singalong renditions of “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Raised on Robbery” — a recognition seemed to ripple through the crowd: Mitchell’s voice had grown even stronger, richer and nimbler in the year since those Newport videos went viral. In that previous performance, Carlile had often guided Mitchell or taken on lead vocal duties herself.
