Early life and family Ono was born in
Tokyo on February 18, 1933, to mother (1911–1999) and father , a wealthy banker and former
classical pianist. Isoko's adoptive maternal grandfather was an affiliate of the
Yasuda clan and
zaibatsu. Yoko's maternal uncle by marriage to Isoko's sister Sumako was the diplomat
Toshikazu Kase, who was present as an English speaking diplomat, at the signing ceremony of the
Japanese surrender, an event that thereby ended
WWII. Eisuke came from a long line of
samurai warrior-scholars. Her younger brother Keisuke was born in December 1936. In 1937, the family was transferred back to Japan, and Ono enrolled at Tokyo's elite
Gakushūin (also known as the Peers School), one of the most exclusive schools in Japan. She attended
kabuki performances with her mother, who was trained in
shamisen,
koto,
otsuzumi,
kotsuzumi,
nagauta, and could read Japanese musical scores. The family moved to
New York City in 1940. The next year, Eisuke was transferred from New York City to
Hanoi in
French Indochina, and the family returned to Japan. Ono was enrolled in Keimei Gakuen, an exclusive Christian primary school run by the
Mitsui family. She remained in Tokyo throughout
World War II and the
fire-bombing of March 9, 1945, during which she was sheltered with other family members in a special
bunker in Tokyo's
Azabu district, away from the heavy bombing. Ono later went to the
Karuizawa mountain resort with members of her family. After the war ended in 1945, Ono remained in Japan when her family moved to the United States and settled in
Scarsdale, New York, an affluent town north of
midtown Manhattan. By April 1946, Gakushūin was reopened and Ono re-enrolled. The school, located near the
Tokyo Imperial Palace, had not been damaged by the war, and Ono found herself a classmate of
Prince Akihito, the future
emperor of Japan. Ono joined her family in New York in September 1952, enrolling at nearby
Sarah Lawrence College. Ono's parents approved of her college choice, but disapproved of her lifestyle and chastised her for befriending people they felt were beneath her. At Sarah Lawrence, Ono studied poetry with
Alastair Reid,
English literature with Kathryn Mansell, and music composition with the
Viennese-trained André Singer. The same year Ono married Japanese composer
Toshi Ichiyanagi, who was studying at
Juilliard and later became a star in Tokyo's experimental community. Ono's parents opposed the marriage, and even though they hosted a reception, they cut off Ono financially after the wedding. After leaving college Ono moved to New York in 1957, supporting herself through secretarial work and lessons in the traditional Japanese arts at the
Japan Society. Ono has often been associated with the
Fluxus group, a loose association of
Dada-inspired
avant-garde artists which was founded in the early 1960s by Lithuanian-American artist
George Maciunas. Maciunas promoted her work, giving Ono her first solo exhibition at his AG Gallery in New York in 1961. He formally invited Ono to join Fluxus, but she declined because she wanted to remain independent. However, she did collaborate with Maciunas,
Charlotte Moorman,
George Brecht, and the poet
Jackson Mac Low, among others associated with the group. events took place, pictured in 2011. Ono first met John Cage through his student Ichiyanagi Toshi, in Cage's experimental composition class at the
New School for Social Research. She was introduced to more of Cage's unconventional
neo-Dadaism first hand, and via his New York City protégés
Allan Kaprow, Brecht, Mac Low,
Al Hansen and the poet
Dick Higgins. After Cage finished teaching at the New School in the summer of 1960, Ono was determined to rent a place to present her works along with the work of other avant-garde artists in the city. She eventually found an inexpensive loft in downtown
Manhattan at 112
Chambers Street and used the apartment as a studio and living space, also allowing composer
La Monte Young to organize concerts in the loft. They both held a series of events there from December 1960 through June 1961; Ono and Young both claimed to have been the primary curator of these events, with Ono claiming to have been eventually pushed into a subsidiary role by Young. Ono presented work only once during the series. The Chambers Street series hosted some of Ono's earliest conceptual artwork, including
Painting to Be Stepped On, a scrap of canvas on the floor that became a completed artwork as footprints were left on it. With that work, Ono suggested that a work of art no longer needed to be mounted on a wall and inaccessible. She showed this work and other instructional work again at Macunias's AG Gallery in July 1961. She is credited for the album cover art for the album
Nirvana Symphony by
Toshiro Mayuzumi, released by Time Records in 1962. After living apart for several years, Ono and Ichiyanagi filed for divorce in 1962. Ono returned home to live with her parents, and, suffering from
clinical depression, was briefly placed into a Japanese
mental institution.
Early career and motherhood On November 28, 1962, Ono married
Anthony Cox, an American film producer and art promoter who had been instrumental in securing her release from the mental institution. In September 1966, Ono visited London to meet artist and political activist
Gustav Metzger's Destruction in Art Symposium in September 1966. She was the only woman artist chosen to perform her own events and one of only two invited to speak. She premiered
The Fog Machine during her
Concert of Music for the Mind at the Bluecoat Society of Arts in Liverpool, England in 1967. Ono and Cox divorced on February 2, 1969, and she married John Lennon later that same year. During a 1971
custody battle, Cox disappeared with their eight-year-old daughter. He won custody after successfully claiming that Ono was an unfit mother due to her drug use. Ono and Lennon searched for Kyoko for years, but to no avail. She would finally see Kyoko again in 1998. Lennon was also intrigued by Ono's
Hammer a Nail where viewers were invited to hammer a nail into a wooden board painted white. Although the exhibition had not yet opened, Lennon wanted to hammer a nail into the clean board, but Ono stopped him. Dunbar asked her, "Don't you know who this is? He's a millionaire! He might buy it." Ono feigned not knowing of the Beatles (even as she had gone to see Paul McCartney asking for a Beatle song score), but relented on the condition that Lennon pay her five
shillings, to which Lennon replied, "I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in." In a 2002 interview, Ono said, "I was very attracted to him. It was a really strange situation." In May 1968, while his wife was on holiday in Greece, Lennon invited Ono to visit. They spent the night recording a selection of avant-garde tape loops, after which, he said, they "made love at dawn". The recordings made by the two during this session ultimately became their first collaborative album, the musique concrete work
Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins. When Lennon's wife returned home, she found Ono wearing her bathrobe and drinking tea with Lennon, who simply said, "Oh, hi." On September 24 and 25, 1968, Lennon wrote and recorded "
Happiness Is a Warm Gun", which contains sexual references to Ono. Ono became pregnant, but had a
miscarriage of a male child on November 21, 1968, a few weeks after Lennon's divorce from Cynthia was granted. On December 12, 1968, Lennon and Ono participated in the BBC documentary about
The Rolling Stones,
The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, along with several other high-profile musicians. Lennon performed his Beatles composition "
Yer Blues" towards the end, with an improvised vocal performance by Ono rounding out the set. The film would not be released until 1996, due to the death of The Rolling Stones' founding member
Brian Jones a few months after it was shot.
Early collaborations, marriage and "bed-ins" at
Hilton Amsterdam, March 1969 During the final two years of the Beatles, Lennon and Ono created and attended public
protests against the Vietnam War. They collaborated on a series of avant-garde recordings, beginning in 1968 with
Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins, which notoriously featured an unretouched image of the two artists nude on the front cover. The same year, the couple contributed an experimental
sound collage to The Beatles' self-titled "
White Album" called "
Revolution 9", with Ono contributing additional vocals to "
Birthday", and one lead vocal line on "
The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill", marking the only occasion in a Beatles recording in which a woman sings lead vocals. On March 20, 1969, Lennon and Ono were married at the registry office in
Gibraltar and spent their honeymoon in
Amsterdam, campaigning with a week-long
bed-in for peace. They planned another bed-in in the US, but were denied entry to the country. They held one instead at the
Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded "
Give Peace a Chance". Lennon later stated his regrets about feeling "guilty enough to give McCartney credit as co-writer on my first independent single instead of giving it to Yoko, who had actually written it with me." During the Amsterdam Bed-In press conference, Yoko also earned controversy in the Jewish community for saying during the press conference that, "If I was a Jewish girl in
Hitler's day, I would approach him and become his girlfriend. After 10 days in bed, he would come to my way of thinking. This world needs communication. And making love is a great way of communicating." Lennon changed his name by
deed poll on April 22, 1969, switching out
Winston for
Ono as a middle name. Although he used the name John Ono Lennon after that, official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono Lennon. The couple settled at
Tittenhurst Park at
Sunninghill, Berkshire, in southeast England. When Ono was injured in a car crash, Lennon arranged for a king-sized bed to be brought to the recording studio as he worked on the Beatles' last recorded album,
Abbey Road.
The Plastic Ono Band ", at the
Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal, 1969 After "The Ballad of John and Yoko", Lennon and Ono decided it would be better to form their own band to release their newer, more personally representative art work, rather than release the sound material as the Beatles. To this end they formed the
Plastic Ono Band, a name based on their 1968
Fluxus conceptual art project of the same name. Plastic Ono Band was first conceived of by Ono in 1967 as an idea for an art exhibition in Berlin but the Plastic Ono Band was first physically realized in 1968 as a multi-media machine maquette by John Lennon, also called
The Plastic Ono Band. constituting the entirety of the second half of the live album.
Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band and Fly Ono released her first solo album,
Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band in 1970, as a companion piece to Lennon's
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. The two albums also had companion covers: Ono's featured a photo of her leaning on Lennon, and Lennon's a photo of him leaning on Ono. Her album included raw, harsh vocals, which bore a similarity with sounds in nature (especially those made by animals) and
free jazz techniques used by wind and brass players. Performers included
Ornette Coleman, other renowned free jazz performers, and
Ringo Starr. Some songs on the album consisted of wordless vocalizations, in a style that would influence
Meredith Monk and other musical artists who have used screams and vocal noise instead of words. The album reached No. 182 on the US charts. When Lennon was invited to play with
Frank Zappa at the
Fillmore (then the Filmore West) on June 5, 1971, Ono joined them. Later that year, she released
Fly, a double album. In it, she explored slightly more conventional
psychedelic rock with tracks including "Midsummer New York" and "Mind Train", in addition to a number of
Fluxus experiments. She also received minor airplay with the ballad "
Mrs. Lennon". The track "Don't Worry, Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)" was an ode to Ono's missing daughter, and featured Eric Clapton on guitar. In 1971, while studying with
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in
Mallorca, Spain, Ono's ex-husband Anthony Cox accused Ono of abducting their daughter Kyoko from the kindergarten. They reached an out-of-court agreement and the charges were dismissed. Cox eventually moved away with Kyoko. Ono would not see her daughter until 1998. The song reached No. 4 in the UK, where its release was delayed until 1972, and has periodically reemerged on the UK Singles Chart. Originally a
protest song about the Vietnam War, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" has since become a Christmas standard. That August the couple appeared together at a benefit in
Madison Square Garden with
Roberta Flack,
Stevie Wonder, and
Sha Na Na for mentally disabled children organized by
WABC-TV's
Geraldo Rivera. In a 2018 issue of
Portland Magazine, editor Colin W. Sargent writes of interviewing Yoko while she was visiting Portland, Maine, in 2005. She spoke of driving along the coast with Lennon and dreamed of buying a house in Maine. "We talked excitedly in the car. We were looking for a house on the water… We did examine the place! We kept driving north along the water until I don't really remember the name of the town. We went quite a ways up, actually, because it was so beautiful." In 1973, Ono recorded a single, "Joseijoi Banzai, Parts 1 and 2" with musicians billed as the Plastic Ono Band and Elephants Memory and released it only in Japan. She cheered feminism by combining lyrics inspired by Japanese war songs with Pop rhythms, signalling a new direction.
Separation and reconciliation , Ono's residence from 1973 to 2023After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Ono and Lennon lived together in London and then moved permanently to Manhattan to escape tabloid racism towards Ono. Their relationship became strained because Lennon was facing deportation due to drug charges that had been filed against him in England, and because of Ono's separation from her daughter. The couple separated in July 1973, with Ono pursuing her career and Lennon living between Los Angeles and New York with personal assistant
May Pang; Ono had given her blessing to Lennon and Pang's relationship. By December 1974, Lennon and Pang considered buying a house together, and he refused to accept Ono's phone calls. The next month, Lennon agreed to meet Ono, who claimed to have found a cure for smoking. After the meeting, Lennon failed to return home or call Pang. When she telephoned the next day, Ono told her Lennon was unavailable, because he was exhausted after a hypnotherapy session. Two days later, Lennon reappeared at a joint dental appointment with Pang; he was stupefied and confused to such an extent that Pang believed he had been brainwashed. He told her his separation from Ono was now over, though Ono would allow him to continue seeing her as his mistress, which did not happen. Ono and Lennon's son,
Sean, was born on October 9, 1975, Lennon's 35th birthday. Following the birth of Sean, both Lennon and Ono took a hiatus from the music industry, with Lennon becoming a
stay-at-home dad to care for his infant son. Sean has followed in his parents' footsteps with a career in music; he performs solo work, works with Ono and formed bands as,
The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger and
The Claypool Lennon Delirium.
Return to music and murder of Lennon In early 1980, Lennon heard
Lene Lovich and
the B-52's' "
Rock Lobster" while on vacation in Bermuda. The latter reminded him of Ono's musical sound and he took this as an indication that she had reached the mainstream (the band had in fact been influenced by Ono). Ono and Lennon began trading songs over the phone with each other, quickly accumulating enough material to record. The emerging album was structured as a dialogue, and was to be credited to John Lennon and Yoko Ono as a duo. It would also mark the return of Lennon to the public eye after a five-year absence, as well as a public reconciliation of Ono and Lennon.
Double Fantasy was released on November 17, 1980, and received tepid initial reviews, with much of the criticism centering on the idealization of Lennon and Ono's marriage and supposed domestic bliss. However, the reception and the legacy of the album would be forever linked with what happened just weeks after its release. On the evening of December 8, 1980, Lennon and Ono were at the
Record Plant Studio and working on Ono's song "
Walking on Thin Ice". When they returned to their Manhattan home
The Dakota, Lennon was
shot dead by
Mark David Chapman, who had been stalking Lennon for two months. Yoko cradled the dying Lennon in her arms, and for a time afterward, lived in constant fear of her own and her son Sean's assassination. After John's death, the interior decorator
Sam Havadtoy moved in to support her. "Walking on Thin Ice (For John)" was released as a single less than a month later, and became Ono's first chart success as a solo artist, peaking at No. 58 and gaining significant underground airplay.
Double Fantasy received an instant critical reappraisal, eventually becoming a landmark album of the 1980s, and winning Ono the 1981
Grammy Award for Album of the Year at the
24th Annual Grammy Awards. In 1981, she released the album
Season of Glass, which featured the striking cover photo of Lennon's bloody spectacles next to a half-filled glass of water, with a window overlooking Central Park in the background. This photograph sold at an auction in London in April 2002 for about $13,000. In the
liner notes to
Season of Glass, Ono explained that the album was not dedicated to Lennon because "he would have been offended—he was one of us." The album received highly favorable reviews In 1982, she released ''
It's Alright''. The cover featured Ono in her wrap-around sunglasses, looking towards the sun, while on the back the ghost of Lennon looks over her and their son. The album scored minor chart success and airplay with the single "
Never Say Goodbye". In 1984, a tribute album titled
Every Man Has a Woman was released, featuring a selection of songs written by Ono performed by artists such as Elvis Costello, Roberta Flack,
Eddie Money,
Rosanne Cash, and
Harry Nilsson. Later that year, Ono and Lennon's final album,
Milk and Honey, was released as a mixture of unfinished Lennon recordings from the
Double Fantasy sessions, and new Ono recordings. It peaked at No. 3 in the UK and No. 11 in the U.S., going gold in both countries as well as in Canada. Ono funded the construction and maintenance of the
Strawberry Fields memorial in Manhattan's
Central Park, directly across from the Dakota, which was the scene of the murder. It was officially dedicated on October 9, 1985, which would have been his 45th birthday. Ono's final album of the 1980s was
Starpeace, a
concept album that she intended as an antidote to
Ronald Reagan's "
Star Wars"
missile defense system. On the cover, a warm, smiling Ono holds the Earth in the palm of her hand.
Starpeace became Ono's most successful non-Lennon effort. The single "
Hell in Paradise" was a hit, reaching No. 16 on the US dance charts, and the video, directed by
Zbigniew Rybczyński, received major airplay on MTV and won "Most Innovative Video" at Billboard Music Video Awards in 1986. In 1986, Ono set out on a goodwill world tour for
Starpeace, primarily visiting Eastern European countries. Ono went on a musical hiatus following the release of
Starpeace, until she signed with
Rykodisc in 1992 and released the comprehensive six-disc box set
Onobox. She also released a one-disc sampler of highlights from
Onobox, simply titled
Walking on Thin Ice. That year, she sat down for an extensive interview with music journalist
Mark Kemp for a cover story in the alternative music magazine
Option. The story took a revisionist look at Ono's music for a new generation of fans more accepting of her role as a pioneer in the blending of pop and avant-garde music. In 1994, Ono produced her own
off-Broadway musical entitled
New York Rock, which featured Broadway renditions of her songs. In 1995, Ono released
Rising, a collaboration with her son Sean and his then-band, Ima.
Rising spawned a world tour that traveled through Europe, Japan, and the United States. The following year, she collaborated with various
alternative rock musicians for an EP entitled
Rising Mixes. Guest remixers of
Rising material included
Cibo Matto,
Ween,
Tricky, and
Thurston Moore. In 1997, Rykodisc reissued Ono's catalog of solo recordings on CD, from
Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band through
Starpeace. In the same year, Ono and the
BMI Foundation established an annual music competition program for songwriters of contemporary musical genres to honor John Lennon's memory and his large creative legacy. Over $350,000 has been given through BMI Foundation's John Lennon Scholarships to talented young musicians in the United States, making it one of the most respected awards for emerging songwriters. In 2000, Ono founded the
John Lennon Museum in
Saitama, Japan, which housed over 130 pieces of Lennon and Beatles memorabilia from Ono's private collection. The museum closed in 2010. A month after the
9/11 attacks, Ono organized the concert "Come Together: A Night for John Lennon's Words and Music" at
Radio City Music Hall. Hosted by the actor
Kevin Spacey and featuring
Lou Reed,
Cyndi Lauper and
Nelly Furtado, it raised money for September 11 relief efforts
Later life and dance chart hits and Yoko Ono at BMI, NYC, in 2004.In 2002, Ono joined the B-52's in New York for their 25th anniversary concerts; she came out for the encore and performed "Rock Lobster" with the band.
Orange Factory,
Peter Rauhofer, and
Danny Tenaglia. In April 2003, Ono's
Walking on Thin Ice (Remixes) was rated number 1 on Billboard's Dance/Club Play chart, gaining Ono her first no. 1 hit. She would have a second no. 1 hit on the same chart in November 2004 with "Everyman... Everywoman...", a reworking of her song "
Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him". During the
Liverpool Biennial in 2004, Ono flooded the city with two images on banners, bags, stickers, postcards,
flyers, posters and badges: one of a woman's naked breast, the other of the same model's
vulva. During her stay in Lennon's city of birth, she said she was "astounded" by the city's renaissance. The piece, titled
My Mummy Was Beautiful, was dedicated to Lennon's mother, Julia, who had died when he was a teenager. According to Ono, the work was meant to be innocent, not shocking; she was attempting to replicate the experience of a baby looking up at its mother's body, those parts of the mother's body being a child's introduction to humanity. Ono performed at the
opening ceremony for the
2006 Winter Olympic Games in
Turin, Italy, Like many of the other performers during the ceremony, she wore white to symbolize the snow of winter. She read a
free verse poem calling for world peace as an introduction to
Peter Gabriel's performance of "Imagine". On December 13, 2006, one of Ono's bodyguards was arrested after he was allegedly taped trying to extort $2 million from her. The tapes revealed that he threatened to release private conversations and photographs. His bail was revoked, and he pleaded not guilty to two counts of attempted
grand larceny. On February 16, 2007, a deal was reached where
extortion charges were dropped, and he pleaded guilty to attempted grand larceny in the third degree, a
felony, and was sentenced to the 60 days that he had already spent in jail. After reading an unapologetic statement, he was released to immigration officials because he had also been found guilty of overstaying his business visa. , 2007 Ono released the album ''
Yes, I'm a Witch in February 2007, a collection of remixes and covers from her back catalog by various artists including The Flaming Lips, Cat Power, Anohni, DJ Spooky, Porcupine Tree, and Peaches, along with a special edition of Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band
. Yes I'm a Witch
was critically well received. A similar compilation of Ono dance remixes entitled Open Your Box'' was also released in April. On June 26, 2007, Ono appeared on
Larry King Live along with McCartney, Starr and
Olivia Harrison. She headlined the
Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago on July 14, 2007, performing a full set that mixed music and performance art. She sang "Mulberry", a song about her time in the countryside after the Japanese collapse in World War II for only the third time ever, with Thurston Moore: She had previously performed the song with John and with Sean. On October 9 of that year, the
Imagine Peace Tower on
Viðey Island in
Iceland, dedicated to peace and to Lennon, was turned on with her, Sean, Ringo, and Olivia in attendance. Each year between October 9 and December 8, it projects a vertical beam of light into the sky. in 2008 Ono returned to Liverpool for the 2008 Liverpool Biennial, where she unveiled
Sky Ladders in the ruins of
Church of St Luke (which was largely destroyed during World War II and now stands roofless as a memorial to those killed in the
Liverpool Blitz). Two years later, on March 31, 2009, she went to the inauguration of the exhibition "Imagine: The Peace Ballad of John & Yoko" to mark the 40th anniversary of the Lennon-Ono Bed-In at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Canada, from May 26 to June 2, 1969. The hotel had been doing steady business with the room they stayed in for over 40 years. That year Ono became a grandmother when Emi was born to her daughter Kyoko. Ono had further Dance/Club Play chart no. 1 hits with "
No No No" in January 2008, and "Give Peace a Chance" the following August. In June 2009, at the age of 76, Ono scored her fifth no. 1 hit on the Dance/Club Play chart with "
I'm Not Getting Enough". Ono appeared onstage at Microsoft's June 1, 2009,
E3 Expo press conference with Olivia Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr to promote the
Beatles: Rock Band video game, which was universally praised by critics. Ono appeared on the Basement Jaxx album
Scars, featuring on the single "Day of the Sunflowers (We March On)". In the same year, she became an honorary patron to
Alder Hey Charity, and created an exhibit called "John Lennon: The New York City Years" for the NYC
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex. The exhibit used music, photographs, and personal items to depict Lennon's life in New York. A portion of the cost of each ticket was donated to Spirit Foundation, a charitable foundation set up and founded by Lennon and Ono.
The new Plastic Ono Band In 2009, Ono recorded
Between My Head and the Sky, which was her first album to be released as "Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band" since 1973's
Feeling the Space. The all-new Plastic Ono Band lineup included Sean Lennon,
Cornelius, and
Yuka Honda. On February 16, 2010, Sean organized a concert at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music called "We Are Plastic Ono Band", at which Yoko performed her music with Sean, Clapton, Klaus Voormann and
Jim Keltner for the first time since the 1970s. Guests including
Bette Midler,
Paul Simon and his son
Harper, and principal members of Sonic Youth and the
Scissor Sisters interpreted her songs in their own styles. On April 1, 2010, she was named the first "Global Autism Ambassador" by the
Autism Speaks organization. She had created an artwork the year before for
autism awareness and allowed it to be auctioned off in 67 parts to benefit the organization. In April 2010,
RCRD LBL made available free downloads of
Junior Boys' mix of "Give Me Something", a single originally released 10 years prior on
Blueprint for a Sunrise. That song and "
Wouldnit (I'm a Star)", released September 14, made it to Billboard's end of the year list of favorite Dance/Club songs at No. 23 and No. 50 respectively. Ono appeared with Starr on July 7 at New York's Radio City Music Hall in celebration of Starr's 70th birthday, performing "
With a Little Help from My Friends" and "Give Peace a Chance". On September 16, she and Sean attended the opening of Julian Lennon's photo exhibition at the Morrison Hotel in New York City, appearing for the first time photos with Cynthia and Julian. She also promoted his work on her website. On October 1 and 2, Sean was musical director for two subsequent shows at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles, featuring Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band with Perry Farrell, Cornelius, Carrie Fisher, Vincent Gallo, Yuka Honda, Haruomi Hosono, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, RZA, Harper Simon, Tune-Yards, Nels Cline, Iggy Pop, Mike Watt, Lady Gaga, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore. She performed 'It's Getting Very Hard' with
Lady Gaga, whom she deeply admires. On February 18, 2011 (her 78th birthday), Ono took out a full-page advert in the UK free newspaper
Metro for "Imagine Peace 2011". It took the form of an open letter, inviting people to think of, and wish for, peace. With son Sean, she held a benefit concert to aid in the relief efforts for
earthquake and tsunami-ravaged Japan on March 27 in New York City. The effort raised a total of $33,000. She also collaborated with The Flaming Lips on an EP entitled
The Flaming Lips with Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band. In July 2011, she visited Japan to support earthquake and tsunami victims and tourism to the country. During her visit, Ono gave a lecture and performance entitled "The Road of Hope" at Tokyo's
Mori Art Museum, during which she painted a large calligraphy piece entitled "Dream" to help raise funds for construction of the Rainbow House, an institution for the orphans of the Great East Japan earthquake. She also collected the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize for her contributions to art and for peace, that she was awarded the year prior. In January 2012, a
Ralphi Rosario mix of her 1995 song "Talking to the Universe" became her seventh consecutive No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart. In March of the same year, she was awarded the 20,000-euro ($26,400)
Oskar Kokoschka Prize in Austria. From June 19 to September 9, her work
To the Light was exhibited at the
Serpentine Gallery in London. It was held in conjunction with the
London 2012 Festival, a 12-week UK-wide celebration featuring internationally renowned artists from
Midsummer's Day (June 21) to the final day of the
Paralympic Games on September 9. The album
Yokokimthurston was also released in 2012, featuring a collaboration with Thurston Moore and
Kim Gordon of
Sonic Youth.
AllMusic characterized it as "focused and risk-taking" and "above the best" of the couple's experimental music, with Ono's voice described as "one-of-a-kind". On June 29, 2012, Ono received a lifetime achievement award at the Dublin Biennial. During this (her second) trip to Ireland (the first was with John before they married), she visited the crypt of Irish leader
Daniel O'Connell at
Glasnevin Cemetery and
Dún Laoghaire, from where Irish people departed for England to escape the famine. In February 2013, Ono accepted the Rainer Hildebrandt Medal at Berlin's
Checkpoint Charlie Museum, awarded to her and Lennon for their lifetime of work for peace and human rights. The next month, she tweeted an anti-gun message with the
Season of Glass image of Lennon's bloodied glasses on what would have been her and Lennon's 44th anniversary, noting that guns have killed more than 1 million people since Lennon's death in 1980. She was also given a Congressional citation from the Philippines for her monetary aid to the victims of
typhoon Pablo, as well as her donation to disaster relief efforts after
typhoon Ondoy in 2009 and assistance of Filipino schoolchildren. In 2013, she and the Plastic Ono Band released the LP
Take Me to the Land of Hell, which featured numerous guests including Yuka Honda, Cornelius, Hirotaka "Shimmy" Shimizu, mi-gu's Yuko Araki,
Wilco's
Nels Cline,
Tune-Yards,
Questlove,
Lenny Kravitz, and
Ad-Rock and
Mike D of the
Beastie Boys. In June 2013, she curated the
Meltdown festival in London, where she played two concerts, one with the Plastic Ono Band, and the second on backing vocals during
Siouxsie Sioux's rendition of "Walking on Thin Ice" at the
Double Fantasy show. In July, OR Books published Ono's sequel to 1964's
Grapefruit, another book of instruction-based 'action poems' this time entitled,
Acorn. Her online video for "Bad Dancer" released in November 2013, which featured some of these guests, was well-liked by the press. By the end of the year she had become one of three artists with two songs in the Top 20 Dance/Club and had two consecutive number 1 hits on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play Charts. On the strength of the singles "
Hold Me" (Featuring
Dave Audé) and "Walking on Thin Ice", the then-80-year-old beat
Katy Perry,
Robin Thicke and her friend
Lady Gaga. Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band continued to perform live into 2015. On February 16, 2016,
Manimal Vinyl released ''
Yes, I'm a Witch Too,
which features remixes from Moby, Death Cab For Cutie, Sparks, and Miike Snow. Like its predecessor, Yes, I'm a Witch Too'' received critical acclaim. On February 26, 2016, Ono was hospitalized after suffering what was rumored to be a possible stroke. It was later announced that she was experiencing extreme symptoms of
the flu. On September 6, 2016,
Secretly Canadian announced that they would be re-issuing 11 of Ono's albums from 1968 to 1985;
Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins through
Starpeace. In December 2016,
Billboard magazine named her the 11th most successful dance club artist of all time. In a piece for the
New Yorker published in November 2021, it was noted that Ono had "withdrawn from public life", with her son Sean now acting as the public representative for the family's interests in the Beatles' business. ==Artwork==