India, July 10 -- Joni Mitchell is having the kind of season many artists don't get even in their prime.

In March, she was awarded Canada's prestigious Juno Lifetime Achievement honour. She walked onstage to a standing ovation, at 82. Weeks earlier, at the Grammys, she won Best Historical Album for Joni Mitchell Archives - Volume 4: The Asylum Years (1976-1980), a six-disc set drawn from the vaults of her most restless creative period. And on June 22, in a coordinated act of communal listening, cinemas in Helsinki, Los Angeles and Sheffield went dark to play Blue (1971) - turning 55 that day - in a deep-listening session (of the kind I have written about in recent editions of this column).

I attended the Helsinki session, where we sat i...