Hejira: Celebrating Joni Mitchell

Hejira bring their tribute to Joni Mitchell to The Tung Auditorium on Saturday 7 November, starting at 7:30 PM. It's a seven-piece band fronted by Hattie Whitehead, with arrangements by bandleader Pete Oxley, and they've spent the last few years working their way through Mitchell's songbook.

They're not just picking the well-known hits. The set draws from Court & Spark through to Wild Things Run Fast, and you'll hear things like 'Amelia', 'Hejira', 'Song For Sharon', 'Coyote', 'Help Me', 'A Case Of You' and 'Free Man in Paris'. The band takes its name and its spirit from Shadows And Light, the live album Mitchell recorded during a brief 1979 tour with a band of her contemporaries, including Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays, Michael Brecker, Jaco Pastorius and Don Alias. That's the same jazz-inflected, ensemble sound they're aiming for here, rather than the solo acoustic thing people often associate with her.

Whitehead fronts the group, taking on the poise, power and beauty of Joni's vocals and playing guitar with her stylistic mannerisms. The band formed in 2023 and focuses mostly on Mitchell's work from the late seventies, when she moved away from the folk-singer-songwriter mould and into the jazz-fusion territory that Shadows And Light represents. They've played more than 140 shows across the UK and Ireland since then, headlined festivals like the EFG London Jazz Festival, Brecon Jazz Festival and the Oxford Festival of the Arts, and gathered over 1.5 million views on YouTube. The Guardian called them 'the UK's best and most convincing take on Joni Mitchell'.

It's a full band on stage, not a solo act, so the arrangements carry a good bit of weight. If you know the records, you'll recognise the songs; if you don't, it's a decent way to get a handle on that late-seventies era. The show is at The Tung Auditorium, 60 Oxford St, Liverpool, on Saturday 7 November, starting at 7:30 PM.