Yuka Honda Built a One-Night Band for Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono did not attend the Broad’s tribute in Los Angeles on 8 August, but her songs arrived with a large and carefully assigned cast. Guest curator Yuka Honda built a house band around Yo La Tengo, guitarist Nels Cline and herself, then matched individual pieces with performers including Kathleen Hanna, Corin Tucker, Sylvan Esso, Rufus Wainwright and Tune-Yards. Yoko Only accompanied the museum’s exhibition Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind.

Honda’s useful decision was not merely to assemble famous names. It was to give them distinct jobs. Hanna and Sleater-Kinney singer Corin Tucker paired up for “No, No, No.” Sylvan Esso took “Sisters O Sisters” and “Walking on Thin Ice”; Tune-Yards’ Merrill Garbus opened with “We Are All Water”; Wainwright sang “I’m Going Away Smiling.” The catalogue began to resemble a score written for contrasting voices, though no such score had ever existed.

The house band carried its own history. Yo La Tengo have performed with Ono several times, and joined David Byrne for “Who Has Seen the Wind” on the 2022 tribute album Ocean Child. Before covering the 1973 single “What Did I Do!”, Ira Kaplan dedicated it to the Beatles, dryly noting that enough time had passed to forgive their attempt to break up the Plastic Ono Band. An old accusation changed direction with a few words and a guitar count-in.

Many of the musicians returned for the finale, “Woman Power.” It offered the practical advantages of a closing number - a large ensemble and a direct refrain - while also making the evening’s argument audible. Ono’s songs were long dismissed as the excesses of one difficult voice. At the Broad, that same catalogue was distributed across indie rock, electronic music, improvisation and new-music performers. The abrasion survived. It simply became communal.

Tribute shows often reduce an artist to the handful of songs that require the least explanation. Honda chose expansion instead. Nobody needed to produce a perfect Ono impersonation. The more revealing test was whether many very different musicians could enter these compositions and still leave their sharp edges intact.