ONE of the hard truths about creating a program for an arts festival is that you can never get everything you want. It's the bane of an artistic director's life. That Mongolian dance troupe spotted in Prague in 2002 has disbanded, the Czech company that recites Joyce while bathing in blood is booked up to 2016, and that much fancied yet temperamental cabaret artiste has an attack of the vapours when he discovers Australia is 22 hours away.

Whatever the reason, a festival is inevitably as much about as what eludes capture as what is secured.

For Brett Sheehy, artistic director of the Melbourne International Arts Festival, an unfulfilled desire was to lure legendary Canadian singer and songwriter Joni Mitchell to Australia for the first time since her one tour here in 1983. In 2005, when he was director of the Sydney Festival, Sheehy gave it a red-hot go, but was unsuccessful.

"I'm mad for Joni, a really big fan, and I tried to get her," Sheehy says. "But her fee was completely unaffordable."

Given that Mitchell, now in her mid-60s, hasn't done anything even remotely resembling a tour since 2000, it's unsurprising that her fee was prohibitive. But it meant that when Sheehy was offered Joni: A Tribute to the Legendary Joni Mitchell, performed by Katie Noonan, Wendy Matthews, Kristin Berardi, Tania Bowra, Louise Perryman, Virna Sanzone, Rachel Gaudry and a 12-piece band, he was very receptive.

At first glance such enthusiasm could seem misplaced: how can a tribute compare with the real thing? But that holds only if your one tribute experience has been catching Mick Jogger and the Rolling Zones down at the local RSL. The super-produced tribute show - where the output of a great musical artist is reinterpreted by other musical artists of note - is fast becoming an attractive mainstay of event programming and arts festivals locally and internationally (think Rufus Wainwright performing Judy Garland's entire Carnegie Hall concert, and Cannot Buy My Soul at last year's Sydney Festival, a homage to the music of Kev Carmody, performed by, among others, Paul Kelly, Missy Higgins, John Butler, Tex Perkins and Clare Bowditch).

Sheehy says the tribute is a legitimate art form in its own right. "For me, hearing other great artists interpret the work of artists we already know is very thrilling," he says.

"I'm a fan of covers.

"I've got a back catalogue of artists I'm desperate to see tribute concerts for: Cat Stevens, Carole Bayer Sager, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, the whole folk canon. When covers are extraordinary they find something brand new in the song every time. I'm interested in fine artists interpreting another's work because you end up with a new work of art, using the original as a launching pad."

Sheehy was awakened to the power of the tribute with Came So Far for Beauty, a tribute to Leonard Cohen masterminded by American uber-producer Hal Willner (also the musical director of Saturday Night Live since the early 80s), and performed by 14 vocalists including Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright and Antony (from Antony and the Johnsons). The concert was performed only three times, in Brighton (Britain), Brooklyn (US) and Sydney in 2005, where Sheehy programmed it as part of the festival. Sheehy calls it a triumph, and one reviewer wrote that "these types of nights aren't supposed to happen until you're dead".

The key is choosing a truly great singer-songwriter and matching their work with exhilarating talent. "The criterion for me is that the artist is legendary, that they've been influential," says Sheehy. "I think it has to do with the lyrics; with both Joni and Leonard, their lyrics stand as poetry as well."

Perhaps it's the fact that both are Canadian. Mitchell, winner of nine Grammys, was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1981. She has directly influenced artists such as Prince, Madonna and Led Zeppelin, and in 2003 Rolling Stone named her the 72nd greatest guitarist of all time (the highest woman on the list). In 2008 Herbie Hancock won album of the year at the Grammys for his tribute to Mitchell, River: The Joni Letters. Mitchell's legacy includes her lauded album Blue and hits such as Big Yellow Taxi, Woodstock, You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio and Both Sides Now.

Admired as a storyteller with beautiful phrasing in her songwriting, Mitchell, who began as a folk singer and switched to jazz fusion, is also renowned for her innovative guitar arrangements; most of the songs she composed on guitar used non-standard or open tunings, and in her early work she experimented widely with harmonics. The combination of lyrical and musical innovation, and unflinching personal integrity lie behind Mitchell's longevity, influence, and power.

People don't just like Mitchell, they adore her. And this too is the secret of the super-produced tribute: pick the right legend and other artists will not only want to be involved, they'll bring their very best.

Noonan, one of our most popular singers and songwriters, has been hugely influenced by Mitchell. "She's such an inimitable musician, a major icon for me, in terms of being a beacon of individuality," she says. "And a real poet, up there with Bob Dylan."

Noonan will be singing A Case of You and My Old Man in the concert; she recently performed Blue in its entirety. "I was a little hesitant at first, doing a tribute show, because my approach is about doing my own music, but with someone like Joni the chance to share her music is a rare and wonderful thing. I'll honour the song but make it my own."

A show's success is partly about gathering performers with the chops and credibility to do justice to a Mitchell or Cohen, but also about trusting them to do their thing.

Willner, credited with kickstarting the genre with his tribute to composer Nino Rota in 1981, understands this well. He has a keen pop-culture sensibility and has celebrated the work of Thelonious Monk, Kurt Weill, Walt Disney film music, Charles Mingus, Leonard Cohen and Edgar Allan Poe with artists such as Debbie Harry, Joe Jackson, Sting, Lou Reed, Ringo Starr, Sun Ra, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop, Laurie Anderson and Jeff Buckley. You wouldn't get Waits and then ask him to sound as much as he can like the original artist.

Jeff Lewis, a co-producer of Joni, understands this. It's about finding a balance between not disappointing Mitchell fans and allowing the artists their freedom. "We're not looking for an out and out impersonation, but we want to capture the spirit of Joni's music," he says. "The thing is, she's a purist, she has a very, very high integrity. It niggles in the background and makes me feel a little uneasy, and I'm sure it does for the performers too. It's important to put on a really high quality show, to pay respect. To me, she's sitting in every seat of the audience. You don't get away with crapping on people's favourites."

In the end, a tribute concert serves two functions. It allows audiences to hear the music of their favourite musicians when there's Buckley's chance they'll see their idol in concert again. And there's the zing of elite artists interpreting the music their way, and for a brief moment creating something extraordinary. The well-produced tribute is a rare and special event, which is also why Sheehy wanted Joni in his festival.

"It's a great opportunity," he says. "All of the women in the show have an incredible bandwidth of talent and careers going in multiple directions. These kind of events can't go on the road, they're one-offs. It could be five years before they're all in the same room again. This is what makes these events so incredible, it's so hard to get (these artists) to take time out from their careers."

As Lewis's co-producer Phil Bathols says, the tribute is a long-standing tradition in the arts. "If you're watching the Sydney Symphony Orchestra play Beethoven, you're not sitting there going, 'This is only a cover band'."

Joni: A Tribute to the Legendary Joni Mitchell is at Hamer Hall, Melbourne on Friday, Sydney Opera House on October 30 and Queensland Performing Arts Centre on November 4.