Joni Mitchell - Shadows and Light [2LP]

Joni Mitchell's Shadows and Light captures her jazz years on stage, a remastered double album recorded live with one of the most remarkable bands she ever assembled.

Recorded at the Santa Barbara County Bowl in 1979 and released in 1980, it closed a chapter in which Mitchell had moved steadily away from folk toward jazz. The lineup was staggering: Pat Metheny on guitar, Jaco Pastorius on bass, Lyle Mays on keyboards, Michael Brecker on saxophone and Don Alias on drums, with The Persuasions adding doo-wop harmonies.

Songs from her late-seventies albums take on new life here. Amelia floats over shimmering guitar, Hejira unfolds with hypnotic patience, and Free Man in Paris gains a looser, swinging feel. Then The Persuasions step forward for a joyous Why Do Fools Fall in Love, a playful detour that lifts the whole room.

Pastorius's fretless bass is a voice in its own right, sliding and singing beneath her, and Brecker's saxophone adds warmth to the band's more adventurous moments. Metheny and Mays, then young stars of their own, bring a luminous, open-ended feel to every song.

Remastered and spread across two discs, it is a fitting document of an artist at her most fearless, unafraid to follow the music wherever it led.