“We’ll be pushing the envelope a little bit,” Yoko Ono says of her performance tonight at the Lower East Side’s Tonic, with her son, Sean Ono Lennon.
“There’s some multimedia, some movements – body movements.”
There’s music, too, Ono adds.
“Sean and I will do a duet, with him playing instruments, and me on vocal.”
So, have they been rehearsing a lot?
“Well, we’ve been rehearing for ages, if you look at it one way,” Ono says. “But no, this won’t really be a song – it’s more avant-garde, experimental.”
Tonight’s performance-art piece is a celebration of Yoko’s birthday. She turned 72 yesterday and has been marking the occasion all week with her family.
It’s also a benefit for Tonic, which has become a haven for New York experimental musicians like John Zorn, Laurie Anderson and Thurston Moore since it opened seven years ago. The club’s rent has doubled since then, and co-owner Melissa Caruso Scott is worried that Tonic might have to close.
“It’s a tough time in general,” she says.
Tonic is raising funds with a pledge drive on its Web site, http://www.tonicnyc.com, and with a week of benefit performances, including Wilco collaborator Jim O’Rourke (Feb. 23) and Sean Lennon with Vincent Gallo (Feb. 24)
Ono says she isn’t surprised by Tonic’s financial woes.
“Unless you’re doing something middle-of-the-road, you have to go through struggles,” she says.
“But it’s very important to have an experimental place like this, where artists can go and do something they can’t do in other theaters.”
In the spirit of avant-garde adventure, Ono will close her show with an audience-participation piece, called ONOCHORD.
“Each person will get a card when they come in the door,” she explains. “I don’t want to tell you too much, but at the end, they all do something, so we participate together.
“Then they can take it out into the world.”
Tonight at 8 p.m. at Tonic, 107 Norfolk St., between Rivington and Delancey streets; (212) 358-7501. $50.