Joniphiles - I just received this press release about the second printing of Karen O'Brien's book. Les
----------------------- Joni Mitchell: Shadows and Light The Definitive Biography By Karen OBrien Fully updated and published on 5th September 2002, priced: #9.99 Uncompromising and iconoclastic, Joni Mitchell confounded expectations at every turn. Restlessly innovative her music evolved from deeply-personal folk stylings into pop, jazz, avant-garde and even world music. Mitchell is one of the worlds most influential recording artists, and a role model for a generation of singer/songwriters from Sheryl Crow and Elvis Costello to Beck and David Gray. Intelligently told and with an unrivalled degree of access, Shadows and Light is the story of a true rock n roll icon. Canadian-born Joni Mitchell began her career as a folk singer/songwriter in the mid-1960s. Championed by the Byrds David Crosby, she quickly threw herself into the Bohemian scene in New York and later Los Angeles. Her musical reputation grew steadily, and in the late sixties and early seventies she enjoyed international success with songs including Chelsea Morning and Big Yellow Taxi, and critically acclaimed albums including the landmark Blue and the jazz-influenced Court and Spark and The Hissing of Summer Lawns. Mitchell has continued to produce both highly-regarded and adventurous music throughout the 70s, 80s, 90s and into the new century, and her musical creativity has been matched by her passion for the visual arts. Her idiosyncratic paintings and photography have been exhibited to acclaim in Canada, the United States, Japan and the UK. This definitive biography includes first hand interviews with those closest to her: friends, musicians, critics and radio DJs, including Suzanne Vega, Larry Klein, Graham Nash, Tom Rush, Elliot Roberts and Richard Thompson. Covering Mitchells visual art as well as her music, the book includes fascinating previously unpublished correspondence between Mitchell and modernist painter Georgia OKeeffe. Published to critical acclaim in October 2001, Shadows and Light has been fully updated and includes new interviews with Jonis first husband, Chuck, as well as Jonis creative reaction to the events of September 11th. Broad in scope and full of detail, this is the remarkable story of the life and loves of an extraordinary and complex artist. Karen OBrien is a music journalist and a BBC World Service radio news editor who has also written and broadcast widely on the arts. Karens previous book, Hymn to Her, a collection of writings on women musicians was published by Virago in 1995. She is a New Zealander by birth and Londoner by choice.
