Mature Baez Is Better Than Ever

Joan Baez has reached her middle years without missing a beat in her illustrious career. In many respects, she is, at 56, better than ever.

Her performance at the Wiltern Theatre on Friday was the work of an artist whose skills--still superb--are now enlightened by a mature serenity that brings wisdom and intuition to everything she sings.

Baez told a few personal anecdotes between numbers and responded graciously to the “We-love-you-Joan” cries from an overflow audience. But she has always been good with audiences, even in the days when she was described as “detached” by some critics.

What was new and different were the colorful timbral range of her voice and the thoughtful, probing intensity of many of her readings. The high-soaring soprano of Baez’s younger years was a marvelous instrument; but the tonally richer, emotionally transformative qualities of her present vocal expression provide her with a much greater capacity for interpretation.

Her versions, for example, of a group of songs from the ‘60s--Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” Phil Ochs’ “There But for Fortune,” Tim Hardin’s “Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep”--were far more than aging snapshots from a scrapbook of familiar favorites. The renderings, driven by Baez’s warm chest tones and dramatically placed phrasing, were mini musical short stories, reflective cameos perfectly blending words and melody.

Dar Williams, opening the show and singing her own “You’re Aging Well” in a duet with Baez, is one of the most impressive of the new singer-songwriters. Like Loudon Wainwright III, surely one of her inspirations, Williams writes songs--”The Babysitter” and “The Christians and the Pagans” were typical--that disguise layers of insight beneath an easygoing surface of wit and humor.