Watch the Joni Mitchell Surprise Newport Folk Festival with a performance

“I just realized, Johnny is the least nervous person here,” he shouted Brandy Carlyle Halfway through history Newport Folk Festival which she praised Joni MitchellIn her first full-length musical debut in two decades.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aqGjaFDTxQ

Over 13 songs, Mitchell, who last appeared at the festival 53 years ago, in 1969, performed in court as a star-studded musical crew (Carlisle, Blake Mills, Lucius, Winona, Silesi, Taylor Goldsmith, Marcus Mumford, and many more.) She sat on the sofas on the stage playing a mix of her old favorites (The Persuasions “Why Fools Fall in Love”, “Love Potion No. 9” from The Clovers as well as a collection of Mitchell’s masterpieces.

Seated on the throne, Mitchell began the group occasionally singing to their own, accompanied by singers such as Carlisle (“Carrie”), Goldsmiths (1991, “Come In From The Cold”) and Celisse (“Help Me”). But by the end of the show, which lasted an hour or more, the 78-year-old singer who had recently sung on stage for the first time in nearly a decade, played a long guitar solo (“Just Like This Train”) and sang a moving vocal sound from The baritone in Gershwin’s “Summertime” as well as the shaking of tears in “Both Sides Now” and “The Circle Game”.

The premise: a recent re-creation of the infamous “Joni Jams,” the informal gatherings of musicians at Mitchell’s Los Angeles home in recent years as everyone from Carlisle to Elton John to Herbie Hancock to Bonnie Wright gather around Mitchell and exchange songs and stories in the years since Mitchell’s aneurysm. “No one brings folk singers together like the humility of trying a new song in front of Johnny Fuck Mitchell,” Carlyle, who staged and orchestrated the entire group, explained in the lead up to the performance.

At the end of the set, Carlisle proclaimed the importance of Eternal Night: “Joni Mitchell,” she said, “is back.”