Joni Mitchell’s performance at the Newport Festival on Sunday became the stuff of legends! The crowd applauded when Mitchell played a guitar solo during her song “Just Like This Train.” “The last time Joni performed with guitar in hand in front of a paying audience was 8,660 days ago, on her 55th birthday,” Mitchell’s website said.
Mitchell suffered a debilitating brain aneurysm in 2015. After this, many fans thought that she would never perform again. She told CBS News that she lost the ability to speak and talk, much less play the guitar after the aneurysm.
A lot of people are very surprised by Mitchell’s recovery. One of them is Dr. Anthony Wang, who works at Ronald Reagan UCLA Hospital as a neurosurgeon. “To be able to recover to the point of being able to perform as a musician is really incredible. But very rarely is that work quite so nuanced,” he told NPR.
The injuries caused by an aneurysm depend on where the disease lands in the brain. If it lands in the parts of the brain that control motor strength, then the patient can bounce back through strength training. But if it lands in the part of the brain that controls the coordination of movements, then it’s much more complex. Wang said that “So playing an instrument and vocal cord coordination, those sorts of things, are really, super complex fine movements that would take a long time to relearn.”
Mitchell relearned how to play the guitar by watching videos of herself playing the guitar. It took years for her to relearn the most basic guitar playing skills.
Link: https://s3.amazonaws.com/appforest_uf/f1659267884790x751132443241529200/Joni%20Mitchell%27s%20Newport%20Folk%20Festival%20performs%20after%20brain%20aneurysm%20_%20NPR.pdf
Mitchell suffered a debilitating brain aneurysm in 2015. After this, many fans thought that she would never perform again. She told CBS News that she lost the ability to speak and talk, much less play the guitar after the aneurysm.
A lot of people are very surprised by Mitchell’s recovery. One of them is Dr. Anthony Wang, who works at Ronald Reagan UCLA Hospital as a neurosurgeon. “To be able to recover to the point of being able to perform as a musician is really incredible. But very rarely is that work quite so nuanced,” he told NPR.
The injuries caused by an aneurysm depend on where the disease lands in the brain. If it lands in the parts of the brain that control motor strength, then the patient can bounce back through strength training. But if it lands in the part of the brain that controls the coordination of movements, then it’s much more complex. Wang said that “So playing an instrument and vocal cord coordination, those sorts of things, are really, super complex fine movements that would take a long time to relearn.”
Mitchell relearned how to play the guitar by watching videos of herself playing the guitar. It took years for her to relearn the most basic guitar playing skills.
Link: https://s3.amazonaws.com/appforest_uf/f1659267884790x751132443241529200/Joni%20Mitchell%27s%20Newport%20Folk%20Festival%20performs%20after%20brain%20aneurysm%20_%20NPR.pdf
