I first
started listening avidly to Joni Mitchell’s music as a teenager in the 1970s,
after being introduced to her albums by a college roomate, who adored Ladies of the Canyon and Blue. We were attending conservatory in
Baltimore, both studying piano performance. Officially, we were there to
discover our callings as musicians, to be initiated into music’s secrets and
gain some control over its brute power. Just as importantly, thought not listed
on the curriculum, we were learning to sort through our own raw and confusing
emotions as we formed our adult selves, and for both of us, the two programs of
study were inseparably linked.
Lloyd
Whitesell, The music of Joni Mitchell
