hejira: a celebration of joni mitchell at st george’s…

One of my regrets in life is never to have seen Joni Mitchell perform ‘live’ and, clearly, it’s now very unlikely that this will change (after her brain aneurysm rupture in 2015, she no longer tours – just the occasional public performances). So, I content myself with playing and enjoying her music at home on a very frequent basis. As you might imagine, it reminds me of my early college days when I first ‘discovered’ her music… she’s been my musical idol ever since.
So, last night I went along to St George’s for a concert entitled ‘Hejira: A Celebration of Joni Mitchell’. Actually, some 18 months ago, I was at a similar concert at St George’s (‘The Songs of Joni Mitchell’) and, for that, I was joined by our Bristol-based daughters, Ru+Hannah, plus Moira (they’re lovely like that! xx). Last night was purely a personal, self-indulgent time to myself.
My favourite ‘Joni songs’ tend to be late 1960s/early 70s (Song to a Seagull, Clouds, Ladies of the Canyon, Blue etc); last night’s concert focussed mostly on songs from the late 70s - which was fine by me (although they did finish with an encore of ‘Both Sides Now’).
As I expected, it proved to be a really enjoyable evening, featuring: Hattie Whitehead (vocals+guitar); Ollie Weston (tenor+soprano saxophones); Chris Eldred (keyboards); Pete Oxley (guitar); Dave Jones (bass); Rick Finlay (drums); and Marc Cecil (percussion).
As usual, I sat upstairs in my favoured Gallery position – close to the stage. In some ways, this is a bit of a mixed blessing – a perfect view of the musicians/performers but, from a sound perspective, some of the quality clearly suffers. I thought that was the particularly the case last night. Vocalist Hattie Whitehead has a wonderful voice but, from my position, she was often somewhat drowned out, to some extent, by what seemed to be an over-enthusiastic drummer(!) – particularly in some of the songs before the interval. In some ways, I think the same comment could be applied to the other musicians. Don’t get me wrong, all of the musicians were clearly incredibly gifted artists in their own right, but I just had the feeling that, at times, some of them were trying too hard to impress! It’s probably all down to my seating location, but I just wanted to ‘turn down’ the drums, bass and guitar and to ‘turn up’ the singer!
Nevertheless, an evening of stunning music and wonderful memories.
Photo: From last night’s concert.
PS: Just in case you didn’t know, ‘Hejira’ is the name of Mitchell’s studio album, released in 1976 (fifty years ago!).
PPS: I also thought some of Pete Oxley’s ‘between-the-songs-chat’ went on far too long!