thumb|right|300px|Oliveros (right) playing in Mexico City in 2006

Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer and accordionist.

Considered a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music, she was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the early 1960s, and served as its director. She taught music at Mills College, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Oliveros authored books, formulated new music theories, and investigated new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of "deep listening" and "sonic awareness", drawing on metaphors from cybernetics. She was an Eyebeam resident.

Early life and education

Pauline Oliveros was born in Houston, Texas, on May 30, 1932. She was of Tejana descent. She went on to learn violin, piano, tuba, and French horn for grade school and college music. At the age of sixteen she resolved to become a composer.

Oliveros arrived in California and supported herself with a day job, and supplemented this by giving accordion lessons.

Career

When Oliveros turned 21, she obtained her first tape recorder, which led to her creating her own electroacoustic pieces. The Center later moved to Mills College, with Oliveros serving as its first director; there it was renamed the Center for Contemporary Music.

In 1966, she attended a summer course in electronic music at the University of Toronto, studying with Hugh Le Caine. "I of IV", one of her most famous electronic pieces, was realized there; in 1967, it was released on LP by Odyssey Records alongside works by Richard Maxfield (Night Music) and one-time San Francisco Tape Music Center associate Steve Reich (Come Out).

Oliveros often improvised with the Expanded Instrument System, an electronic signal processing system she designed, in her performances and recordings. Oliveros held Honorary Doctorates in Music from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Mills College, and De Montfort University.

In 1967, Oliveros left Mills to take a position at the University of California, San Diego. She also studied karate under Ingber, achieving black belt level. In 1973, Oliveros conducted studies at the university's one-year-old Center for Music Experiment; she served as the center's director from 1976 to 1979. In 1981, to escape creative constriction, she left her tenured position at UCSD and relocated to upstate New York to become an independent composer, performer, and consultant.

In 1987, Oliveros had the tuning of her accordion changed from equal temperament to just intonation. She sings and plays the retuned accordion (without electronics) in the 1993 opera Agamemnon.

Oliveros was a member of Avatar Orchestra Metaverse, a global collaboration of composers, artists and musicians that approaches the virtual reality platform Second Life as an instrument itself.

Deep listening

thumb|Oliveros at Other Minds 20 in San Francisco in 2015

In 1988, as a result of descending into the Dan Harpole underground cistern in Port Townsend, Washington, to make a recording, Oliveros coined the term "deep listening" Stuart Dempster, Oliveros and Panaiotis then formed the Deep Listening Band, and deep listening became a program of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation, founded in 1985. The Deep Listening program includes annual listening retreats in Europe, New Mexico and in upstate New York, as well as apprenticeship and certification programs. The Pauline Oliveros Foundation changed its name to Deep Listening Institute, Ltd., in 2005. The Deep Listening Band, which included Oliveros, David Gamper (1947–2011) and Dempster, specialized in performing and recording in resonant or reverberant spaces such as caves, cathedrals and huge underground cisterns. They have collaborated with Ellen Fullman and her long-string instrument, as well as countless other musicians, dancers and performers. The Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, initially under the direction of Tomie Hahn, is the steward of the former Deep Listening Institute. A celebratory concert was held on March 11, 2015, at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic.

Sonic awareness

thumb|200px|Oliveros at the Sonic Acts festival in 2012

Heidi Von Gunden names a new musical theory developed by Oliveros, "sonic awareness", and describes it as "the ability to consciously focus attention upon environmental and musical sound", requiring "continual alertness and an inclination to be always listening" and which she describes as comparable to John Berger's concept of visual consciousness (as in his Ways of Seeing). Oliveros discusses this theory in the "Introductions" to her Sonic Meditations and in articles. Von Gunden describes sonic awareness as "a synthesis of the psychology of consciousness, the physiology of the martial arts, and the sociology of the feminist movement", and describes two ways of processing information, "attention and awareness", Practice of the theory creates "complex sound masses possessing a strong tonal center".

Personal life

Oliveros was openly lesbian. In 1975 Oliveros met her eventual partner, performance artist Linda Montano. The titles of Oliveros' pieces Rose Moon and Rose Mountain refer to Montano having gone by Rose Mountain at one time. In her later years, Oliveros developed a 32-year romantic partnership and creative collaboration with sound artist IONE (Carole Lewis). The couple worked together on several major musical theatre productions, dance operas, and films. Sound artist Maria Chavez, a friend and mentee of Pauline, describes Pauline and Ione: "when you saw them together, you saw love."

Oliveros was also a patron of Soundart Radio in Dartington, Devon, England.

Death

Oliveros died in 2016 in Kingston, New York.

  • 2007, Resounding Vision Award from Nameless Sound
  • 2009, recipient of the William Schuman Award, from Columbia University School of the Arts
  • 2012, John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts

Notable works

  • Sonic Meditations: "Teach Yourself to Fly", etc.
  • Sound Patterns for mixed chorus (1961), awarded the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in 1962, available on Extended Voices (Odyssey 32 16) 0156 and 20th Century Choral Music (Ars Nova AN-1005)
  • I of IV, included in the collection New Sounds in Electronic Music, published by Odyssey Records, 1967
  • Music for Annie Sprinkle's The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop—Or How To Be A Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps (1992)
  • Theater of Substitution series (1975–?). Oliveros was photographed as different characters, including a Spanish señora, a polyester-clad suburban housewife, and a professor in robes. Jackson Mac Low played Oliveros at the New York Philharmonic's "A Celebration of Women composers" concert on November 10, 1975, and Oliveros has played Mac Low (see Mac Low's "being Pauline: narrative of a substitution", Big Deal, Fall 1976). (ibid, p. 141)
  • Echoes from the Moon (1987) which uses Earth–Moon–Earth communication
  • Crone Music (1989)
  • "Six for New Time" (1999), for Sonic Youth
  • "the Space Between with Matthew Sperry", (2003) 482Music

Oliveros' work Deep Listening Room was featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.

Notable students

References

Further reading

  • Duckworth, William, Talking Music, New York: Schirmer Books, 1995.
  • Zimmerman, Walter, Desert Plants – Conversations with 23 American Musicians, Berlin: Beginner Press in cooperation with Mode Records, 2020 (originally published in 1976 by A.R.C., Vancouver). The 2020 edition includes a cd featuring the original interview recordings with Larry Austin, Robert Ashley, Jim Burton, John Cage, Philip Corner, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Joan La Barbara, Garrett List, Alvin Lucier, John McGuire, Charles Morrow, J.B. Floyd (on Conlon Nancarrow), Pauline Oliveros, Charlemagne Palestine, Ben Johnston (on Harry Partch), Steve Reich, David Rosenboom, Frederic Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum, James Tenney, Christian Wolff, and La Monte Young.
  • Deep Listening Institute
  • Pauline Oliveros Foundation
  • Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: Faculty and Staff: Pauline Oliveros, Clinical Professor, Arts Department, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
  • The Sonic Rituals of Pauline Oliveros by Ron Drummond
  • EST Interview
  • Pauline Oliveros in conversation with Frank J. Oteri
  • Listen to an excerpt of Oliveros' Alien Bog at Acousmata music blog
  • Interview with Pauline Oliveros by Bruce Duffie, April 5, 1996
  • Interview with Pauline Oliveros by Lutz Felbick, July 10, 1999
  • Pauline Oliveros Papers MSS 102. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego Library
  • Pauline Oliveros Papers in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
  • Pauline Oliveros' entry, UbuWeb Film
  • Pauline Oliveros' entry, UbuWeb Sound
  • Pauline Oliveros Interview – NAMM Oral History Library (2016)
  • exhibit in Athens, Greece, documenta 14, featuring many of Oliveros's manuscripts

Listening

  • Dear.John: A Canon on the Name of Cage on Larry Polansky's Home Page
  • Epitonic.com: Deep Listening Band featuring a track from Deep Listening
  • , two works by the composer
  • at SASSAS