She probably didn’t appear on a stage with a couch, standard lamp and flower vase when she burst forth in 1960, but Joan Baez is of such sanctified and iconic status half a century on that if she wants such props with her, she damn well can.

Anyway, the audience on Monday only cared about her and her voice; she operates at a lower register than of old, but that voice is as clear and beautiful as ever and I had forgotten just how precise her acoustic guitar playing is. Baez’s choice of material is blameless; for every Farewell Angelina there’s a God is God by Steve Earle, and she followed Scarlet Tide (a nice piece by Elvis Costello) with “the best anti-war song I’ve ever sung!” — Dylan’s With God On Our Side. Her version of Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne was evidently deeply felt.

In jeans and a dark jacket, she sang virtually non-stop for nearly two hours — sometimes alone in the spotlight, but often backed by two excellent musicians: Dirk Powell on keyboard and anything with strings, and subtle percussionist Gabriel Harris (her son). There was a wonderful central section incorporating Phil Ochs’s There But For Fortune; Swing Low, Sweet Chariot; another Ochs song, Joe Hill (dedicated to the international Occupy Movement); and an atmospheric House of the Rising Sun.

Name-dropping can be irksome, but Joan Baez delighted with unfussy mentions of the Beatles (she was in their hotel room when they invaded New York in 1964) and singing Catch The Wind (as she did beautifully for us) with Donovan. There was a touching tale of a snowy evening in Warsaw with Lech Walesa and a surprising one about Johnny Cash’s love life.

Baez closed with her one self-penned classic Diamonds and Rust, then The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Imagine and Blowing in the Wind. She looked tired at the end, but it had been a triumph.