Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono is a Japanese artist and director, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking and for her marriage to John Lennon. Ono brought feminism to the forefront in her music.

In 1961, she had her first major public performance in a concert at the Carnegie Recital Hall which featured radical experimental music and performances. She had a second engagement at the Carnegie Recital Hall in 1965, in which she debuted "Cut Piece."

With John Lennon, they collabrated as Plastic Ono Band which included "Imagine", "Give Peace a Chance" and "Power to the People".

On December 8, 1980, Lennon and Ono were in the studio working on Ono's song Walking on Thin Ice. When they returned to their home in New York City, Lennon was shot dead by Mark David Chapman, a deranged fan who had been stalking Lennon for two months. "Walking on Thin Ice (For John)" was released as a single less than a month later, and became Ono's first chart success, peaking at No. 58. In 1981, she released the album Season of Glass.

In 1982, she released It's Alright (I See Rainbows) which included the singles "My Man" and "Never Say Goodbye". In 1984, a tribute album titled Every Man Has a Woman was released, featuring a selection of Ono songs 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 an unfinished demo.

Her next album, Starpeace, was a concept album that she intended as an antidote to Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense system. The album featured the single "Hell in Paradise" which reached No. 16 on the US dance charts and No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100.

In 1992, the six-disc box set Onobox was released and included remastered works from all of Ono's solo albums, as well as unreleased material from the 1974 "lost weekend" sessions. There was also a one-disc "greatest hits" release of highlights from Onobox, simply titled Walking on Thin Ice.

In 1994, Ono produced her own musical entitled New York Rock, featuring Broadway renditions of her songs. In 1995, she released Rising, a collaboration with her son Sean and his band, Ima. The next year, she collaborated with various alternative rock musicians for an EP entitled Rising Mixes.

In 1997, Rykodisc reissued all her solo albums on CD, from Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band through Starpeace. In 2001, Ono's feminist concept album Blueprint for a Sunrise was released. In April 2003, Ono's Walking on Thin Ice (Remixes) was released. She released the album Yes, I'm a Witch in 2007, a collection of remixes and covers from her back catalog by various artists including The Flaming Lips, Cat Power, Antony, DJ Spooky, Porcupine Tree and Peaches.

In 2009, Ono recorded Between My Head and the Sky, 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 includes Sean Lennon, Cornelius and Yuka Honda.

During her career, Ono has collaborated with a diverse group of artists and musicians.