Joni Mitchell

The 78-year-old artist performed a full set, her first in about two decades, at the renowned festival in Rhode Island on Sunday.

She added, “I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.” Mitchell, never one for the limelight, has remained largely out of the public eye since having a brain aneurysm in 2015. “I will never be over this.

Joni Mitchell's surprise performance at the Newport Folk Festival was just what we needed — a reminder that joy trumps despair every time.

It wasn’t just a testimony to those miracles that can only be achieved through both individual determination and community support; it was a reminder that there is a reason to keep hanging in there, pushing forward, seeing the bows and flows of angel hair along with the rain and snow. For those who had begun to wonder, with troubling regularity, if it is possible for American culture to recover from its wounds, self-inflicted and otherwise — or, even more tragically, if there is even a reason to try — Mitchell’s performance was a brief glimpse of possibility. But it wasn’t just the wondrous and wholly unexpected sight and sound of this Canadian-born American master live that caused throats around the world to catch. Mitchell delivered the song’s conclusion — “I really don’t know life at all” — not in bewilderment or wistful regret but with amused surrender and a glint of delight. “They could never cage or categorize her,” said one of my friends, who has long worshiped Mitchell. “Each of her works is like a little jewel in how it tells its story, and then there is that beautiful unquenchable voice.” There at the behest of Brandi Carlile, Mitchell, 78, who has spent years recovering from a brain aneurysm, sang, played guitar and proved there is a reason for social media to exist.

The last time this artist took the Newport stage was 1969. Heck, her last full concert anywhere was in the year 2000. So yesterday, when folk star Brandi ...

And the painted ponies go up and down. JONI MITCHELL AND BRANDI CARLILE: (Singing) And the seasons, they go round and round. So that moment during the song "Just Like This Train" from her album "Court And Spark" - wow.

Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell stole the show with a surprise appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island on Sunday, playing her first ...

“Joni’s looked at life from so many sides and she came out of the storm singing like a prophet,” Carlile wrote on Twitter after the show. In January, Mitchell demanded her work be removed from music-streaming service Spotify in protest of coronavirus misinformation she said was being featured there. Mitchell told CBS she taught herself to play again after the aneurysm.

For the first time since 2000, folk legend Joni Mitchell took to the stage with some friends, to the delight of fans at the Newport Folk Festival.

And the painted ponies go up and down. JONI MITCHELL AND BRANDI CARLILE: (Singing) And the seasons, they go round and round. So that moment during the song "Just Like This Train" from her album "Court And Spark" - wow.

NEWPORT, RI (AP) - Surprise! Joni Mitchell is back onstage. The folk legend performed her first full-length concert on Sunday at the Newport Folk Festival ...

After their rendition of “Both Sides Now,” Carlile was fighting back tears. Mitchell has contended with health complications since suffering an aneurysm in 2015, and her last full show was in late 2002, according to reports. Seated in a wingback chair and wearing a blue beret and sunglasses, Mitchell joined festival headliner Brandi Carlile and a bevy of other artists, including Wynonna Judd, Allison Russell and Marcus Mumford. It was Mitchell's first Newport festival performance since 1969.

The legend played her first show in 22 years at the Newport Folk Festival, imbuing her early masterpieces with lived experience.

It’s also true that Mitchell could have plucked many other songs from her catalog that would have been equally appropriate to the occasion: tough and tender, hopeful but undeluded, sharing the complicated wisdom gained from a life spent in observation. The words are the same, but their implications are different. Just listen to the version of “Both Sides Now” she released in 2000, 30 years on from the original.

At the Newport Folk festival this weekend, the 78-year-old Canadian musician joined younger peers such as Brandi Carlile and Wynonna Judd to perform some of her ...

We will delete any personal data when we no longer require it for this purpose. We will only use the data you provide us for the purpose of the feature. Your responses are secure as the form is encrypted and only the Guardian has access to your contributions.

The iconic singer-songwriter wasn't able to walk or talk after a brain aneurysm in 2015. Dr. Anthony Wang, a neurosurgeon, explains the challenges she faced ...

You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic.

The 78-year-old artist performed a full set, her first in about two decades, at the renowned festival in Rhode Island on Sunday.

She added, “I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.” Mitchell, never one for the limelight, has remained largely out of the public eye since having a brain aneurysm in 2015. “I will never be over this.

Joni Mitchell has revealed that she's been using online guitar videos to relearn the instrument following her aneurysm in 2015. I'm looking at videos that ...

You don’t know how to get out of bed. When you have an aneurysm, you don’t know how to get into a chair. “I’m learning.

Musicians Wynonna Judd and Blake Mills, and a Newport Folk Festival producer, recount the lead up to, and miracle of, Mitchell's surprise performance.

“I ended up in a dressing room with Joni and Brandi for an hour, and I was on my knees in front of her, putting sparkles on her face.” During the gig, Mills said he was amazed at the new harmonies Mitchell seemed to be coming up with on the fly — “inventing a new vocal role for Joni Mitchell in Joni Mitchell music,” as he put it. But we put it in a tuning for her — I think it was open D, which is the tuning for ‘Come in From the Cold’ — and she started to strum. “If she’s gonna learn how to walk and how to sing and how to play guitar again — if she’s gonna come back to the stage — maybe it happens at the place where it all started,” he said. But I felt like I was in eighth grade again and my mom was gonna come in my room and tell me to do my chores. “Joni came in and we all watched her stand up and put her guitar on, the Parker Fly, and my jaw just hit the floor,” Mills said. “You’re hoping you’re gonna be in the right place at the right time. “She has a unique right-hand posture — it’s more like a bass player — and the motion seemed foreign to her,” Mills continued. Mitchell’s set at Newport — where the 78-year-old last sang in the late 1960s, just before the string of fierce and tender albums, “Blue” and “Court and Spark” among them, that would make her a superstar — was meant to replicate the so-called Joni Jams she’s held at her home in Bel-Air since the aneurysm that made it difficult for her to move and to use her voice. But I feel like I was there to be a messenger of how precious life is because of my mother,” she added of Naomi Judd, who died from suicide in April. “Joni was the soundtrack of my childhood — she’s my hero — and Brandi invited me to come and be a witness to her incredible journey. “It was magic — like death and life at the same time.” “Brandi looked at me and said, ‘One year from now we’ll be on this boat toasting the fact that we brought Dolly Parton to Newport,’” Sweet recalled. “I’m still like: What the heck just happened?” the veteran country star said Tuesday of Mitchell’s first full public concert since she suffered a debilitating aneurysm in 2015.

The singer-songwriter's surprise return to the stage at the folk festival she first played in 1967 was an act of bravery, joy and reinterpretation.

Surrounded by an adoring crowd of friends, fellow musicians, and admirers — many of whom were not yet born when Mitchell wrote “Both Sides Now” — she seemed to sing it this time with a grinning shrug: I really don’t know life at all. That version was considered a tear-jerker (and used to this effect in a classic scene from the movie “Love, Actually”), but then again, it’s easy to find pathos in getting older. When Mitchell first came out onstage, she seemed a tad overwhelmed, clinging to her cane and backing up Carlile, who took the lead on a breezy, celebratory “Carey.” But over the course of that song, a visible change came over Mitchell. Her shoulders loosened. “It’s life’s illusions I recall,” she sang at the end of the song, “I really don’t know life at all.” Even when she was singing lead, tackling these complex songs with a soulful ease, Carlile’s gaze was attentively fixed on Mitchell, ready to catch her in case she stumbled but more often just letting Mitchell guide the way. “We didn’t live in the time of Shakespeare, Rembrandt or Beethoven,” Carlile said during one of the several recent concerts she’s given in which she’s performed Mitchell’s 1971 album “Blue” in its entirety.