By: Tyler Dudek

Joni Mitchell performed at the Newport Folk Festival on Sunday. It was her first public

performance after she fell ill in 2015.

Mitchell, a Canadian-American singer-songwriter, is a legend because of her extraordinary

accomplishments. She is a nine-time Grammy-winning singer, and her songs were very popular in the 1970s.

In March 2015, Mitchell suffered a brain aneurysm rupture, an unusual swelling of the main

vein in the brain which left her unable to speak or walk, much less play the guitar.

People are astounded by Mitchell’s recovery. Dr. Anthony Wang, a doctor that studies brains at Ronald Reagan UCLA Hospital is one of them.

“To be able to recover to the point of being able to perform as a musician is really incredible,”

Wang told NPR. Doctors that study brains often use “return-to-work” as a marker of a

successful functional recovery, he explained. “But very rarely is that work quite so nuanced.”