The daughter of a grocery store manager and a teacher in Canada, Joni Mitchell is now a US citizen, a Buddhist, a poet and a painter, whose heroes are Miles Davis, Pablo Picasso and Georgia O'Keeffe.

Uncompromising and iconoclastic, Mitchell has confounded expectations at every turn- wildly innovative, her music evolved from deeply personal folk into pop, jazz and avant-garde, prophetic of the multi-cultural experimentation of the `80s and `90s. Fiercely independent, she resisted the whims of mainstream audiences and the male-dominated recording industry. Mitchell's records may never have sold as widely as some of her contemporaries, but no one experimented so recklessly or so bravely explored territory outside of accepted pop music.