Voice Piece for Soprano, a score dated as being from the fall of 1961, was created in the same year that Yoko Ono’s first public music performance took place at the Village Gate in New York City. Ono’s performances are mostly based on very simple, poetic instructions, which are at one and the same time word images, guidelines and evocations of the imagination. Voice Piece for Soprano makes use only of the voice and the imagination as unformed (sound) material that can be re-created every time. What is produced is a state that can be experienced individually: a state that—similar to meditation—is free of concentration and complex trains of thought. Zen and its understanding of being as a permanent process of transformation is thus an important source for Ono’s early work.