With song and dance and spoken word the legacy of Ono, who attended the performance, was a moving celebration.
As singer Shirley Manson closed out a celebration of Yoko Ono in Los Angeles on Friday, she admitted that as a child she believed she should hate Ono, wrongly blaming her as many once did for marrying John Lennon and the break-up of the Beatles that soon followed.
But hate turned to love, Manson said, the perfect sentiment for all that John and Yoko espoused.
And looking into the darkness to where Ono sat quietly watching, Manson said she now only hoped she didn’t burst into tears, so much does she admire and adore Ono and the bold, powerful, challenging art she has created.
“Yoko, you are not even close to getting the recognition you deserve,” Manson said to the 86-year-old artist.
Then with Manson joining the choir that had backed other women who’d sang songs by Ono throughout the night, everyone in the Walt Disney Concert Hall sang along to “Imagine,” the 1971 song co-written by Ono and Lennon – though she didn’t receive proper credit for her contributions until years later – bringing to a close this beautiful, unique night of music, dance, poetry and performance.
Breathewatchlistentouch: The Work and Music of Yoko Ono was hosted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and produced in partnership with Girlschool LA, as part of its ongoing Fluxus Festival, a celebration of the avant-garde art movement of the ’60s and ’70s in which much of Ono’s work was centered.
It revealed, as Manson acknowledged after her performance of Ono songs “What A Bastard The World Is” and “Nobody Sees Me Like You Do,” that the world has never seen Ono as it should have, for in her words and music and artistic ideas, there is love, power and beauty.
And there is a celebration of women in all their strength and glory, too, a point underscored in a production that featured 75 women and just a handful of men.
