“It happened at the time of my life, when I least expected it.” Yoko Ono decided to celebrate her 80th birthday with a concert in legendary Volksbühne theatre in Berlin. She chose Volksbühne because of her admiration for Bertolt Brecht who has played an important role there.

The concert with the Plastic Ono Band was a vivid demonstration of Yoko Ono’s strong performance power. The two songs played in this video (‘It Happened’ & ‘Waiting For The D Train’) are the first two songs of the concert that also featured appearances from Peaches, Michael Stipe (REM) and Rufus and Martha Wainwright.

Yoko Ono (b. 1933) is a Japanese avant-garde artist and musician. Ono was born in Tokyo, but moved to New York when she was 18, becoming becoming an influential practitioner of conceptual and performance art in the 1960s and consequently one of the most important representatives of the fluxus movement. As a musician, Ono embarked on a music career with Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band (1970) and also collaborated with huband and artistic partner, musician John Lennon (b.1940-s.1980), on Grammy Award winning albums such as ‘Double Fantasy’ (1980). In 1989, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City presented a retrospective of Ono’s work, and in 2000 the retrospective, ‘Yes Yoko Ono’, opened at the Japan Society Gallery in New York City and traveled extensively thereafter. In 2015, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City presented a retrospective of her early art. Among several prestigious awards, Ono received a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

Musicians:

Sean Lennon – guitar, piano, bass
Yuka C. Honda- keyboard / laptop (Cibo Matto)
Yuko Araki – drums (Cornelius)
Nels Cline – guitar (Wilco)
Michael Leonhart – trumpet (Steely Dan / Donald Fagen)
Charlotte Kemp Muhl – bass, guitar (Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger)
Jared Samuel -keyboard (Invisible Familiars)

Recorded at The Volksbühne Theater in Berlin, February 17th, 2013 by Yoko Ono’s production team.

Supported by Nordea-fonden