Because the music of Joni Mitchell thrives on specifics - the right melodic twist, the apt metaphor - it lends itself more to the craft of the recording studio than to the adventure of live performance.

Then, too, Mitchell has been a notoriously shy performer in the past, given to murmuring songs that on records she trilled with passion.

Thus, last night’s show at the Mann Music Center was a pleasant surprise: After a full decade of prominence, Joni Mitchell has come to terms with her stardom. She drifted onto the Mann stage in a loose-fitting white dress, her hair a limp puff of blonde curls - a victim of the evening’s oppressive humidity.

Strumming an electric rhythm guitar and rubbing her hips against the beat, she sang with fluid strength and skipped over the various periods of her career, backed by a jazzy four-piece band. As frequently was suggested last night, Mitchell embodies the best aspects of the 1970s singer-songwriter trend. Amid colleagues as varied as James Taylor, Paul Simon, and Laura Nyro, Mitchell took the biggest chances; her music consistently has been among the most radical in form and idea. For all of her obsessive self-absorption, Mitchell has an eye for the precise detail that illuminates a lyric, and an ear for the kind of off-balance, quirky rhythms that express the mixed emotions that fill so many of her songs.

On early 1970s albums such as “Blue,” “For the Roses” and “Court and Spark,” she proved that she had both a questing artist’s spirit and an enormous popular appeal. The low point of her career came later in the decade, when her fondness for jazz’s radical possibilities made her feel self-conscious about technique and experimentalism.

At the Mann Music Center last night, all of those qualities filtered through Mitchell’s show. One minute she would be tumbling through an agonizingly discursive tune like “God Must Be A Boogie Man,” from the doomed “Mingus” album. A few minutes later, she would perform a lovely simple version of “A Case of You.”