For the first time in 23 years, Joni Mitchell will be the headlining act.

On June 10, 2023, the singer will perform at Washington’s Gorge Amphitheatre. Brandi Carlile first made the announcement on The Daily Show, and it was later confirmed by an official source. The night before, Carlile will also play a headline show at the same location. She referred to it as “one of the most beautiful venues in the world.”

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Echoes through the Canyon, also known as Joni Jam II, is the name of the two-night show. The first official Joni Jam performance was when Carlile and the singer made an impromptu appearance together at the Newport Folk Festival. Carlile reported that Mitchell told her after the performance, “I want to do another show … I want to play again.” Mitchell’s home has hosted other Joni Jam sessions.

Who is Joni Mitchell?

Roberta Joan “Joni” Mitchell CC is a Canadian-American singer-songwriter and painter born on November 7, 1943.

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Mitchell’s compositions frequently focus on social and philosophical ideas as well as her thoughts about romance, womanhood, disillusionment, and joy. She draws inspiration from folk, pop, rock, classical, and jazz. Numerous honours have been bestowed upon her, including ten Grammy Awards and a 1997 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

“When the dust settles, Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century,” according to AllMusic and Rolling Stone referred to her as “one of the greatest songwriters ever.”

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Before venturing on to the nightclubs of Toronto, Ontario, Mitchell started singing in local nightclubs in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and other parts of western Canada. In 1965, she relocated to the US, where she started performing.

She was able to contract with Reprise Records and record her debut album, Song to a Seagull, in 1968 thanks to the recordings of some of her original songs (Urge for Going, Chelsea Morning, Both Sides Now, and The Circle Game) by other folk singers. With songs like Big Yellow Taxi and Woodstock, Mitchell helped define an era and a generation after relocating to Southern California.

It was ranked as the 30th best album ever created in Rolling Stone’s 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, rising to number 3 in the 2020 edition. Her 1971 album Blue is frequently recognised as one of the best albums of all time.

One of the 25 albums that The New York Times identified as “turning points and pinnacles in 20th-century popular music” in 2000 was Blue. On a list of the Best Albums Made By Women in 2017, NPR rated Blue at the top.

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On 1974’s Court and Spark—her best-selling album—Mitchell switched labels and started experimenting with more jazz-influenced melodic concepts through luscious pop textures. This album produced the radio successes Help Me and Free Man in Paris.

Around 1975, Mitchell’s vocal range started to transition from mezzo-soprano to a more versatile contralto. As she combined jazz with rock and roll, R&B, classical music, and non-Western beats, her distinctive piano, and open-tuned guitar compositions also became more harmonically and rhythmically complex.

She started collaborating with well-known jazz musicians in the late 1970s, including Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, and Charles Mingus, who invited her to be a part of his final recordings.

Later, she started paying attention to pop and electronic music and started engaging in politics. 

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In 2002, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 44th Annual Grammy Awards, and in 2021, she was honoured by the Kennedy Center.

Most of her albums were produced or co-produced by Mitchell herself. She stopped touring and released her 17th and final album of original songs in 2007. She was an outspoken critic of the music industry. Mitchell describes herself as a “painter derailed by circumstance” and has created the majority of her own record covers.

Joni Mitchell secured a position at Toronto’s Penny Farthing Folk Club in the spring of 1965. She met Michigan-born Charles Scott “Chuck” Mitchell, an American folk musician, there. In April, Joni travelled to the US with Chuck and made her first trip outside of Canada. There, they started collaborating professionally. In June 1965, at the age of 21, she legally married Chuck in his hometown, assuming his last name.

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She travelled to New York City to pursue a solo career after she and Chuck divorced in early 1967, ending their marriage and musical partnership.

Joni collaborated on early 1980s recordings with Larry Klein, a bassist and sound engineer, whom she subsequently married in 1982. However, they got divorced 12 years later.

Mitchell was pregnant while attending university and gave birth to a child whom she was forced to give up for adoption since the child’s father refused to marry her. The child’s adoptive parents gave her the name Kilauren Gibb. Mitchell and her biological daughter were finally reunited after a prolonged 30 years of estrangement.