Joni Mitchell will release Joni’s Jazz on September 5, a career-spanning anthology that traces her deep and evolving relationship with jazz. The 61-track collection arrives as an 8LP vinyl box set, a 4CD edition, and across all digital platforms. Both physical versions feature liner notes, rare and previously unpublished photographs, and original artwork by Mitchell. A fine art print is available exclusively through jonimitchell.com with purchase.
Mitchell personally selected the recordings, which include studio cuts, live performances, alternate takes, and collaborations from across her five-decade career. Two previously unreleased demos from 1980 appear for the first time, including “Be Cool,” now available digitally.
The set features contributions from key jazz collaborators, including Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorius, Herbie Hancock, and Charles Mingus. Mitchell dedicates the release to Shorter, who died in 2023, describing him as her favorite musical partner. “He will be missed, but he will remain alive for me in this music,” she writes.
Drawn from albums such as The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira, Mingus, Both Sides Now, and Turbulent Indigo, the collection highlights Mitchell’s sustained dialogue with jazz forms, from the harmonic complexity of “Harry’s House / Centerpiece” to the sonic collage of “The Jungle Line” and the orchestral sprawl of “Paprika Plains.” The earliest track, “Marcie,” dates to 1968’s Song to a Seagull; the most recent is “Summertime,” captured live at her 2023 Newport Folk Festival appearance—her first full-length concert in over 20 years.
Joni’s Jazz offers a self-curated portrait of Mitchell as a composer and interpreter working at the intersection of songcraft and improvisation. Rather than adopting jazz conventions wholesale, she reshaped them to fit her voice and vision. As she remarked in last year’s Joni Mitchell Archives – Vol. 4, “People ask me my favorite of my albums—it’s going to be Joni’s Jazz.” Now that album exists.
4CD Track Listing
CD One
- “Blue”
- “Trouble Man” – Kyle Eastwood feat. Joni Mitchell
- “Moon At The Window” – Demo 2 *
- “Be Cool” – Demo 2 *
- “Harlem In Havana”
- “Cherokee Louise”
- “Come In From The Cold”
- “In France They Kiss On Main Street”
- “Nothing Can Be Done”
- “Sex Kills”
- “Edith And The Kingpin”
- “Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire”
- “The Jungle Line”
- “Shades Of Scarlett Conquering”
- “Yvette In English”
- “Marcie”
- “A Bird That Whistles”
CD Two
- “Love”
- “Comes Love”
- “The Man I Love” – Herbie Hancock feat. Joni Mitchell
- “At Last”
- “You’re My Thrill”
- “Sometimes I’m Happy”
- “Stay In Touch”
- “The Crazy Cries Of Love”
- “Face Lift”
- “Sweet Sucker Dance” – Early Alternate Version
- “You Dream Flat Tires”
- “Answer Me, My Love”
- “Love Puts On A New Face”
- “Both Sides Now”
CD Three
- “Harry’s House/Centerpiece”
- “Sunny Sunday”
- “Hana”
- “Last Chance Lost”
- “Smokin’ (Empty, Try Another)”
- “Hejira” – Live at The Santa Barbara County Bowl (10/9/79)
- “Refuge Of The Roads”
- “Paprika Plains”
- “Blue Motel Room”
- “Black Crow”
- “Off Night Backstreet”
- “Just Like This Train”
- “No Apologies”
- “Not To Blame”
- “The Magdalene Laundries”
CD Four
- “The Sire Of Sorrow (Job’s Sad Song)”
- “God Must Be A Boogie Man”
- “A Chair In The Sky”
- “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” – Live at The Santa Barbara County Bowl (10/9/79)
- “The Tea Leaf Prophecy (Lay Down Your Arms)” – Herbie Hancock feat. Joni Mitchell
- “Shine”
- “If I Had A Heart”
- “Impossible Dreamer”
- “One Week Last Summer”
- “Summertime” – Live at Newport Folk Festival (7/22/23)
- “Stormy Weather”
- “Two Grey Rooms” – Demo 5
- “The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines”
- “Twisted”
- “If”
- Previously Unreleased