Joni Mitchell - Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting to Be Danced

2014 newly remastered career-spanning box set: LOVE HAS MANY FACES: A QUARTET, a BALLET, WAITING TO BE DANCED.

The box set collects 53 tracks over four discs from her early Reprise label recordings through her later Geffen Records & back, personally chosen by Joni. Long time listeners should find the music familiar but fresh. There has been a lot of sonic adjustment. Newcomers to this music have an adventure before them - a journey into highly-original, harmonically innovative, unusually rhythmic music.

Some of the greatest musicians in the world are gathered here - supporting this emotionally charged exploration of love's many faces. This set truly is an artist-curated collection. Joni personally selected the material from 40 years of recording. She designed the complete package. It includes a deluxe hardcover book by Joni that contains 53 lyrical poems (one for each song), six new paintings and extensive liner notes with an autobiographical text illuminating her recording process. It is funny, mystical, and informative.

This set was first conceived as the music to a ballet about love. After several years, she had created a four-act ballet based on the 53 songs that make up this inspiring collection. 'I am a painter who writes songs. My songs are very visual. The words create scenes, What I have done here is to gather some of these scenes (like a documentary filmmaker) and by juxtaposition, edit them into a whole new work,' the artist writes.

She organized the music into different thematic acts, which allowed her songs to interact with one another in a whole new way. The process, she says, was a lot like making a film. 'I had forty years of footage to review. Then, suddenly, scenes began to hook up. Then series began to form. Instead of it being an emotional roller coaster ride as it was before - crammed into one disc - themes began to develop. Moods sustained. I was getting there... When this long editorial process (two years) finally came to rest, I had four ballets or a four-act ballet - a quartet. I also had a box set.'