PORTLAND – Veteran culture icon Judy Collins will bring her blend of interpretive folk songs and contemporary themes to Merrill Auditorium Sunday, Sept. 16. Also performing will be Grammy Award-winning songstress Nanci Griffith.

One of the major interpretive singers of the 1960s, Collins has recorded songs by such celebrated songwriters as Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman, Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. Yet over the course of her illustrious 47-year career, she has recorded only one song, “In My Life,” by the legendary songwriting team of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Collins, who recorded “In My Life” in 1966 and included it on her groundbreaking album of the same title, said in a prepared statement. “I think I was meant to wait and do their songs all at once.” That reference is to her new CD, “Judy Collins Sings Lennon & McCartney,” her 44th album, released on her own label, Wildflower Records, earlier this summer.

Sung in Collins’ pure, angelic soprano, the 12 tracks are all familiar classics from the Beatles’ colossal catalog. “I just chose what I like, though we did limit the selections to Lennon and McCartney. These are their short, sweet, perfect songs,” Collins said.

Among those included on the CD are “Blackbird,” “Penny Lane,” “Norwegian Wood,” “Good Day Sunshine,” “Hey Jude,” “Yesterday,” “The Long and Winding Road,” and “We Can Work It Out.”

“What’s going on in the world today culturally and politically, well, I have a feeling that’s why I did this album now,” said Collins, a longtime social activist. “We’re faced with so many of the same problems. I mean, it’s an enormous struggle for us to get clear of this awful condition that we’ve inadvertently brought upon the planet. Once again, we have to figure out how to live with it and what to do about it. We were in the same boat 40 years ago.”

A relentlessly creative spirit, Collins is also an accomplished painter, actor (she appeared in Bob Balaban’s theatrical production of “The Exonerated” in 2003), filmmaker (her documentary about her classical piano instructor, conductor Antonia Brico, received an Oscar nomination in 1974), record label head (founded in 1999, Wildflower Records releases not only Collins’ albums but also those of half a dozen other artists), and in-demand keynote speaker for mental health and suicide prevention organizations, a role she took on after her only son killed himself in 1992.

Also an author, Collins’ newest book, “The Seven T’s: Finding Hope and Healing in the Wake of Tragedy,” published in May, helps guide readers through grieving the loss of a loved one who has died under tragic circumstances.

Through it all, Collins, who has been open about her past battles with depression and substance abuse, has lived a life informed by a positive outlook. “It’s not what happens to you, it’s the attitude you bring to it,” she affirmed in a prepared statement.

Collins launched her recording career at age 22 with her 1961 guitar-based folk debut, “A Maid of Constant Sorrow.” Her 1966 album, “In My Life,” was considered a major departure for a folk artist and paved the way for her work over the next decade. On her 1967 album, “Wildflowers,” she began to record her own compositions and earned her first gold record and major hit, the Grammy-Award winning “Both Sides Now.”

By the 1970s, she was known for her versatility and range, scoring hits with both the traditional Christian hymn “Amazing Grace” and Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway ballad “Send In the Clowns,” which also earned her a Grammy Award in 1975.

Over the years, Collins has continued to release albums, including several beloved Christmas records in the ’90s, as well as 2005’s “Portrait of An American Girl,” which featured several of her own compositions. With “Judy Collins Sings Lennon & McCartney,” she revisits the interpretive gifts that made her a star.

Over the course of her career, Griffith has proven herself to be a master musician as well as an adept interpreter of other writers’ songs. Since her Rounder/Philo debut album, the “Queen of Folkabilly” (Rolling Stone), in 1978, she has recorded more than 20 albums, including the Grammy Award-winning “Other Voices, Other Rooms.” In 1989, she contributed “The Wexford Carol” to the Chieftains’ Grammy Award-winning album, “A Chieftain’s Celebration.”

Griffith’s critically acclaimed album, “Ruby’s Torch,” released last November, is a collection of intimate torch songs, some penned by her, others by some of her musical heroes such as Willie Nelson, Tom Waits and Jimmy Webb. Recently, Griffith was a featured guest on NPR’s “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me.”