“I wrote that song about 150 years ago when I was in England,” said Joan Baez early in her set on Sunday night at York Barbican.

Baez must feel like she’s lived a life – she’s been singing in public for over 50 years, visited Vietnam during the US’s decade-long battle for the region, and stood up for human rights.

Now 71, she wears her age well: silver hair tops a sharp, intelligent face and her voice, although hoarser and gruffer than her pure soprano from her youth, is still full of emotion and power.

Playing acoustic guitar, Baez was accompanied my multi-instrumentalist Dirk Powell and percussionist Gabe Harris.

The set was full of ballads that reflected Baez’s five decades as a veteran folk performer, with a proportion of songs (Farewell Angelina, Blowin’ In The Wind, With God On Our Side, Love Is Just A Four Letter Word) reflecting this famous part of Baez’s life.

Offering a tantalising glimpse of their life together in the 1960s, she described how she made Bob Dylan eat soup as he devoted himself to songwriting. Her song Diamonds And Rust is an ambiguous love letter to the great songwriter, and she closed the main set with this song before returning for encores.

Baez noted: “It’s good to be in England where the ballad reigns supreme,” and the audience, which had its fair share of grey hair and bald heads, seemed to love the steady pace of the music. But some more up-tempo numbers would have helped to vary the dynamics.

At times it felt like a 1960s nostalgia show, with covers of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, a haunting reading of Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne, Donovan’s Catch The Wind and the final number, Imagine. But the packed house loved it, and by the end many were on their feet, grateful that a Sixties heroine had stopped by.