Joni Mitchell made a triumphant return to the stage over the weekend, as she played her first headline show in more than 20 years.
The music icon suffered a near-fatal aneurysm in 2015. As a result, she had to re-learn how to walk, talk, and play the guitar.
"I'm learning," she previously told CBS correspondent Anthony Mason.
"I'm looking at videos that are on the net to see where I put my fingers, you know. It's amazing what an aneurysm knocks out — how to get out of a chair!" she continued. "You don't know how to get out of a bed. You have to learn all these things by rote again.
"I was into water ballet as a kid, and I forgot how to do the breaststroke. Every time I tried it, I just about drowned ... a lot of going back to infancy almost. You have to relearn everything."
None of that deterred her though, and on Saturday Mitchell performed for nearly three hours alongside other prominent music figures Annie Lennox, Marcus Mumford, and Brandi Carlile, BBC reported.
The event took place at the Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington state and was billed "Joni Jam." The show was more a collaborative project than a standard gig.
"It's not gonna be someone coming up here singing their songs one after the other," explained Carlile, who helped put the show together. She likened the event to looking into a snow globe and catching a glimpse of Mitchell's life over the last decade.
"[I've] watched one of the most miraculous things I've seen in my life," Carlile continued, "and now you get to see it."
Mitchell opened the concert with the hit song, "Big Yellow Taxi," BBC reported, before performing a string of other well-known numbers from her back catalog.
Mitchell was joined on stage by Sarah McLachlan, who launched into a duet of "Blue," while Mumford performed "California" and Lennox took on "Ladies of the Canyon." Mitchell concluded her set with a rendition of Frank Sinatra's "Young At Heart."
"And if you survive to 105, Look at all you'll derive," she sang. "Out of being alive. And here is the best part. You have a head start. If you are among the very young at heart."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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