As readers will recall from February’s Jazzwise, Hejira are a seven-piece British band dedicated to playing the music of Joni Mitchell. Their main focus is the seminal double live album Shadows and Light that she recorded in 1979 with Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays, Don Alias, Michael Brecker and Jaco Pastorius. And in fact, 10 of the 12 tracks on Live at the Cockpit are taken from that album, the only exceptions being ‘A Case of You’ (originally from Mitchell’s album Blue) and ‘Blue Motel Room’ (from Hejira - yes, this is getting confusing).

The first and most obvious question to ask is: why make an album that largely reproduces another album? Hattie Whitehead’s voice is spine-shiveringly like Mitchell’s, and just as full of delicacy, emotion and intelligence. But Live at the Cockpit does not simply reproduce the songs; it reinterprets them. For one thing, Mitchell plays electric guitar on her own album, whereas Whitehead plays acoustic, sharing guitar duties with bandleader Oxley.

There’s also a little less solo grandstanding here than on the original - Hejira’s aim is to serve the songs. They are a formidably tight unit, imparting a practised smoothness to the performances. The recording is of optimal quality for a live album too – helped, no doubt, by improvements to the technology over the last quarter of a century.

Anything that helps keep a band of this quality on the road is to be welcomed, and Live at the Cockpit will probably sell well at the many gigs Hejira have in their diary during the rest of 2024.