ACCLAIMED singer-songwriters Zervas & Pepper are bringing This Flight Tonight, an intimate five-piece acoustic tribute to the music of Joni Mitchell, to this year’s St Ives September Festival.

Featuring songs such as California, Blue, Woodstock, Both Sides Now, Coyote, Big Yellow Taxi, A Case Of You and many more, the show will take place at St Ives Theatre on Sunday September 21.

Zervas and Pepper’s five-piece band will perform the nucleus of Mitchell's work - that pivotal break-out period from 1968 to 1976 - with voice, guitar and piano front and centre in an intimate acoustic concert that evokes the feeling that the audience is having a private listening session at Joni's house in Laurel Canyon during the summer of love.

Joni Mitchell is one of the most influential artists of the modern age, rising to stardom in the late 1960s, her music and songwriting is the jewel in the crown of the Woodstock generation.

Bursting on to the scene with a sound entirely her own, Joni earned the respect of her musical peers and the love of her audiences worldwide.

Mitchell's albums and songs are widely recognised as masterpieces, standards that would become the soundtrack to the lives of countless fans throughout the world and continue to draw and inspire new generations of fans.

Zervas & Pepper are Welsh singer-songwriters Paul Zervas and Kathryn Pepper who have been creating and performing original music for more than a decade professionally.

The duo and their recording/touring band enjoy cult success on the UK and European Folk/Americana scene and have released five critically-acclaimed studio albums and undertaken countless live headline and support tours, receiving strong national and international network radio support throughout their career.

The original music has garnered praise and accolades from the likes of CSNY legend David Crosby and BBC DJs Mark Radcliffe, Bob Harris, Lauren Laverne and Don Letts.

“We are musical purists,” explains Kathryn Pepper. “If we're going to present Joni's music for a live show then we are going to aim to recreate the performances almost exactly as they were intended.

“As songwriters and performers ourselves we know that every single note, inflection, momentary pause was placed there by the artist with intent.

“We hold Joni Mitchell's music in the utmost regard and so we aim to capture its inner spirit and channel its majesty into each live performance.”

Paul Zervas said: “Joni's music has so much depth, musically, lyrically and melodically, there's so much to get your head around when attempting to recreate this classic songbook.

“As a guitarist who learned to play from listening to Joni's incredible catalogue, it's just staggering the sheer amount of alternate tunings, variances of chord positions and nuanced harmonic voicings that have gone into all these songs.

“We aim to be as authentic as possible when performing this music as it's these important facets that the fans want to hear. With Joni's music, her tunings and alternative melodic approaches are just as important as her lyrics, it’s the interplay between to two that create the full picture of Mitchell's evocative landscape.”

As young songwriters Zervas & Pepper like many music fans were beguiled by Mitchell's music and Kahryn recalls: “This music had such a profound effect on me that I completely immersed myself in Joni's albums.

“Musically complex, lyrically intriguing, I became an avid listener. I learned to use my voice in ways I hadn't for my early bands.

“We've thought long and hard about the type of show we ourselves would love to see as lifelong fans of Joni Mitchell's music and we kept returning to what we consider to be the nucleus of Mitchell's work, that pivotal break-out period 1968-1976.”

The band consists of Kathryn Pepper (lead vocals, dulcimer, percussion), Paul Zervas (acoustic guitar, backing vocals), Andrew Brown (bass guitar), Charlie Herbert (piano, Keyboards, backing vocals) and Sam Andrews (percussion, electric guitar, backing vocals).

Festival information and online ticket booking at www.stivesseptemberfestival.co.uk