Joni Mitchell to Receive Les Paul Innovation Award at 35th Annual NAMM TEC Awards

“Thank you for this honor,” said Mitchell. “I'm grateful for being appreciated.”

A consummate artist, Roberta Joan Anderson is an accomplished musician, songwriter, poet and painter. An only child, Joni’s artistic talents blossomed early as she began drawing as a young child. Always a lover of music, it wasn't until high school in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan that Joni began performing. She bought a ukulele and soon began playing in the local club, The Louis Riel, in 1962.

Heading to art school in Calgary after graduation, Joni auditioned at a coffeehouse called The Depression and immediately landed a regular gig there. Weighing two viable career options - art or music - she decided to focus on the latter. In 1964, Joni moved to Toronto and immersed herself in the fledgling Yorkville folk scene - performing in coffeehouses along with other fellow unknowns Neil Young and Gordon Lightfoot. It was during this time that Joni’s songwriting skills began to emerge.

Moving stateside in 1965, Joni worked the coffeehouse circuit for the next three years - playing as many as twenty sets a week. David Crosby caught her performance in a Florida club in 1967, was ‘stunned’ by her talent, and invited her to Los Angeles.

Soon thereafter Joni signed with Reprise Records. Her first record, Song to a Seagull,was released in 1968. A wholly original masterpiece buoyed by her unique songwriting and guitar style, this album still sounds fresh and timeless 50 years on.

Joni Mitchell went on to serve as producer for most of her subsequent albums. She produced and recorded Blue (1971), a unique collection of songs, performed with an emotional honesty that resonated with a wide audience. Blue is considered by many critics to be one of the best LPs of pop music ever created.

Joni's most commercially successful LP, Court and Spark (1974) was created with the jazz-fusion group The LA Express. The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975) steered her away from traditional pop forms into formats of complex lyrics and melodies, accompanied by a variety of jazz musicians. Her album Hejira (1976) shed much of the instrumentation creating a minimalist recording with an expansive ambience achieved with the help of her sound engineer, Henry Lewy, by overdubbing Joni's electric rhythm guitar. In 1978 one of jazz's great geniuses, Charles Mingus approached Joni to propose a collaboration. The result was Mingus (1979), released shortly after Mingus's untimely death from ALS.

Dog Eat Dog (1985) featured Joni's exploration of sociopolitical themes set to complex synthesizer arrangements. In the 1990s her acoustic guitar playing came back to the forefront and produced the Grammy winning Turbulent Indigo(1994). She has also recorded an orchestral retrospective, Travelogue(2002), two live recordings, Miles of Aisles(1974])and Shadows and Light (1980), and an orchestrated collection of popular music standards, Both Sides Now(2000). In 2007 the Alberta Ballet Company staged the ballet “The Fiddle and the Drum,” choreographed to a collection of Joni Mitchell's recordings. Her last recording of new material was 2007’s Shine.

Although Joni’s sophisticated music rarely topped the pop charts (“Help Me” reached #7 in 1974), many of her songs have become classics. “River,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” and “A Case of You” are instantly recognizable. “Woodstock” has become the anthem of the 60’s counter-culture movement and “Both Sides Now” has been recorded more than 1,250 times by other artists.