Various Artists - Joni Mitchell: The Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, D.A.R. Constitution Hall, Washington DC, 3-1-2023

Last month as I write this, March 2023, Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell was awarded the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. A TV show of this event was filmed and broadcast a few days ago. That's why there now is an audio recording of it in excellent quality.

Mitchell is 79 years old as I write this, and she isn't in the best of health. In 2013, she had a brain aneurysm and nearly died. She had to relearn how to sing and play guitar from scratch. The good news is that she had made a remarkable recovery. She played a set at the Newport Folk Festival in 2022, and she's scheduled to perform a full concert in June 2023. However, for this show, she only sang for two songs at the end. The rest features other musical artists performing some of her best known songs.

I edited this down a bit. I kept all the music, but I cut out some extraneous material between songs. For instance, there were some extra testimonials about Mitchell by people who didn't actually perform any songs. Garth Brooks was one of them. As another example, there was a brief interview with Mitchell filmed at another time in which she was asked her opinion of jazz musician Wayne Shorter, who had died recently. There also were speeches and introductions by various people, including a bunch of US senators and other politicians. I cut all that out, and only kept comments by artists that were relevant to the songs they were about to play. I also included Mitchell's acceptance speech, which appears to be surprisingly brief, less than a minute long.

This album is an hour and three minutes long.

01 talk (Marcus Mumford)
02 Carey (Marcus Mumford with Brandi Carlile & Lucius)
03 talk (Brandi Carlile)
04 Both Sides Now (Annie Lennox with Brandi Carlile & Lucius)
05 Help Me (Angelique Kidjo)
06 talk (James Taylor)
07 California (James Taylor)
08 talk (Brandi Carlile)
09 Shine (Brandi Carlile with Lucius & Celisse)
10 talk (Ledisi)
11 Big Yellow Taxi (Brandi Carlile, Angelique Kidjo, Cyndi Lauper, Annie Lennox, Ledisi & Lucius)
12 talk (Cyndi Lauper)
13 Blue (Cyndi Lauper)
14 A Case of You (Graham Nash)
15 talk (Herbie Hancock)
16 River (Herbie Hancock & Ledisi)
17 talk (Diana Krall)
18 For the Roses (Diana Krall)
19 talk (Joni Mitchell)
20 Summertime (Joni Mitchell with Brandi Carlile, Lucius & Celisse)
21 The Circle Game (Joni Mitchell & Everyone)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15429956/JniMitchll_GershwnPrizePopularSng__DARCnstitutionHllWashingtnDC__3-1-2023_atse.zip.html

The cover is a photo from the TV show.