fbpx
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Print Edition
    • Get Home Delivery
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Submit Your Event
    • Customer Support
    • Submit A News Tip
    • Send Letter to the Editor
    • Where’s My Paper?
  • Our Newsletters
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Free HV1 Trial
Hudson Valley One
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s UP
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Subscribe to the What’s UP newsletter
  • Opinion
    • Letters
    • Columns
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Log Out
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s UP
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Subscribe to the What’s UP newsletter
  • Opinion
    • Letters
    • Columns
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Log Out
No Result
View All Result
Hudson Valley One
No Result
View All Result

Evening of Joni Mitchell songs at Bearsville

by John Burdick
April 1, 2016
in Art & Music, Entertainment
0

hissing 2 @The confessional singer/songwriters of the ’70s took their clan name and their rulebook from the confessional poets of the ’50s and ’60s. But, like hipsters and grunge rockers, few confessional poets would ever actually call themselves by that name. It was a critics’ term, first used to describe the radically intimate voice and content of Robert Lowell’s 1959 volume Life Studies and later used to yoke Lowell into a school (for poets move in schools, like crows in murders and owls in parliaments) with such eventual icons as Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton and such disparate poets’ poets as W. D. Snodgrass (Heart’s Needle) and John Berryman (Dream Songs), all of whom shared in the moment’s spirit of self-disclosure and reflection but who otherwise had little in common.

The confessional poets were not born free; they broke free in the classic manner of revolutionaries: by turning the skills that they learned in prestigious institutions against the stodgy and repressive codes of the establishment that trained them. Most made their names as tricky academic poets, descendents of Modernists like T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden. They were insiders, the cream-of-the-crop in the increasingly unpopular, rarefied profession of 20th-century poetry. Even the biggest rock star that confessional poetry produced, Sylvia Plath, was a formal and relatively decorous poet in the only collection that she published in her lifetime: The Colossus and Other Poems. That advanced technical skill is still very much in evidence in Ariel as well.

To the ritualized disappointment of generations of undergrads, most landmark confessional poetry is hardly the unadorned, risqué, primal and artless venting that the label would seem to suggest – hardly the antidote to a semester of Milton. It is virtuosic and demanding verse in its own way. Of all the confessional singer/songwriters of the ’70s – the James Taylors and Jackson Brownes, Carly Simons and Carole Kings of the pop landscape – the one who worked most in the tradition of Plath and Lowell was Joni Mitchell, not because she was the most candid and revealing but because she was – by a mile – the most skilled, advanced, complex and difficult.

The confessionalists can claim Blue as their own: her most personal, intimate and influential album, and my favorite as well (though when I was young it was all about the West Coast, jazzy sophistication of Court and Spark and The Hissing of Summer Lawns). But the rest of Joni’s dazzlingly diverse and adventurous catalogue really seems to belong to players now. She is the official, preferred singer/songwriter of players everywhere: a writer of such formidable musical substance that top-tier jazz and fusion cats with solo careers like Jaco Pastorius, Pat Metheny, Larry Carlton, Tom Scott and on and on all but lined up and begged to be her sidemen.

It is thus no surprise that when the Bearsville Theater presents “Shadows and Light: An Evening of Joni Mitchell Songs” on Saturday, August 9, there will be a lot of formidable instrumentalists on the tribute’s bill. Singers and songwriters are certainly represented as well, in the persons of Leslie Ritter, Julie Last (who has worked with Mitchell), Amy Fradon, Adrien Reju and others; but on the top line you will also find players’ players like Scott Petito, A-list session and tour musicians like drummer Zachary Alford (David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, B-52s) and world-class jazz heavies like the master composer, interpreter and reed-player Don Byron. It is not just that players love Joni as they love few others in the pop sphere; it’s that, in some cases, these are the only people who can actually cut this stuff.

Shadows and Light: An Evening of Joni Mitchell Songs, Saturday, August 9, 9 p.m., $20 advance/$25 door, Bearsville Theater, 291 Tinker Street, Woodstock; (845) 679-4406, www.bearsvilletheater.com.

Join the family! Grab a free month of HV1 from the folks who have brought you substantive local news since 1972. We made it 50 years thanks to support from readers like you. Help us keep real journalism alive.
- Geddy Sveikauskas, Publisher

John Burdick

Related Posts

O+ Festival announces headliners for 2025
Art & Music

O+ Festival announces headliners for 2025

July 7, 2025
Party with Congolese dance music in Kingston this Saturday
Community

Party with Congolese dance music in Kingston this Saturday

July 4, 2025
Rupco marks 35 years of providing shelter
Art & Music

Summertide celebrates Lace Mill’s 10-year anniversary with art and music

July 4, 2025
Todd Rundgren returns to Bearsville celebrating enduring music career
Art & Music

Todd Rundgren returns to Bearsville celebrating enduring music career

July 3, 2025
Dual exhibits open at Wired Gallery this Saturday
Art & Music

Dual exhibits open at Wired Gallery this Saturday

July 3, 2025
’Tis the season for outdoor art
Art & Music

’Tis the season for outdoor art

June 28, 2025
Next Post

Masterpieces of Polish cinema at Upstate Films

Weather

Kingston, NY
73°
Rain Shower
5:28 am8:34 pm EDT
Feels like: 73°F
Wind: 1mph NNE
Humidity: 94%
Pressure: 29.94"Hg
UV index: 0
FriSatSun
88°F / 70°F
86°F / 68°F
86°F / 68°F
Kingston, NY 10 days weather forecast ▸

Subscribe

Independent. Local. Substantive. Subscribe now.

  • Subscribe & Support
  • Print Edition
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
  • Our Newsletters
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Free HV1 Trial

© 2022 Ulster Publishing

No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Art
    • Books
    • Kids
    • Lifestyle & Wellness
    • Food & Drink
    • Music
    • Nature
    • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Contact Us
    • Customer Support
    • Advertise
    • Submit A News Tip
  • Print Edition
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
    • Where’s My Paper
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Log In
  • Free HV1 Trial
  • Subscribe to Our Newsletters
    • Hey Kingston
    • New Paltz Times
    • Woodstock Times
    • Week in Review

© 2022 Ulster Publishing