Pauline Oliveros

Oliveros playing in Mexico City

Pauline Oliveros (born May 30, 1932, Houston, Texas) is an American accordionist and composer who was a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music.

She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s, and served as its director. She has taught music at Mills College, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Oliveros has written books, formulated new music theories and investigated new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of "Deep Listening" and "sonic awareness".

Early career

Oliveros earned degrees from Moores School of Music at the University of Houston and San Francisco State University where her teachers included composer Robert Erickson. At the University of Houston, she was a member of the band program and was a founding member of the local chapter of Tau Beta Sigma Honorary Band Sorority.

Oliveros is one of the original members of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, which was the resource on the U.S. west coast for electronic music during the 1960s. The Center later moved to Mills College, where she was its first director, and is now called the Center for Contemporary Music. Oliveros often improvises with the Expanded Instrument System, an electronic signal processing system she designed, in her performances and recordings.

UCSD

In 1967, Oliveros left Mills to take a faculty music department position at UCSD.^[1] There, Oliveros met theoretical physicist and karate master Lester Ingber with whom she collaborated in defining the attentional process as applied to music listening.^[2] Oliveros also studied karate under Ingber, achieving black belt level. In 1973, Oliveros conducted studies at UCSD'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,^[3] she left her tenured position at UCSD^[4] and relocated to upstate New York to become an independent composer, performer and consultant.^[4]

Deep Listening

Oliveros coined the term "Deep Listening" in 1991,^[1] a term which she then applied to her group The Deep Listening Band and to the Deep Listening program of Deep Listening Institute, Ltd. (formerly 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 Deep Listening Band, which includes Oliveros, David Gamper, and Stuart Dempster, specializes 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.

Sonic awareness

Von Gunden (1983, p.105-107) describes and names a new musical theory, developed by Oliveros in the "Introductions" to her Sonic Meditations and in articles, called "sonic awareness." Sonic awareness is the ability to consciously focus attention upon environmental and musical sound, requiring continual alertness and an inclination towards always listening, and comparable to John Berger's concept of visual consciousness (as in his Ways of Seeing). "Sonic awareness is 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, focal attention and global attention, which may be represented by the dot and circle, respectively, of the mandala Oliveros commonly employs in composition. Later this representation was expanded, with the mandala quartered and the quarters representing actively making sound, imagining sound, listening to present sound, and remembering past sound. This model was used in the composition of her Sonic Meditations. Practice of the theory creates "complex sound masses possessing a strong tonal center", as focal attention creates tonality and the global attention creates masses of sound, flexible timbre, attack, duration, intensity, and sometimes pitch, as well as untraditional times and spaces for performance such as requiring extended hours or environmental settings. The theory promotes easily created sounds such as vocal ones, and "says that music should be for everyone anywhere."

Composer, teacher, author

In 1994, Oliveros was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Grants to Artists award.

Oliveros currently teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Mills College. She is openly lesbian.^[5]

Oliveros is the author of four books, Initiation Dream, Software for People, The Roots of the Moment, and Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice. Several of Oliveros' lectures and published articles are available on her website.

She recently contributed a chapter to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky.

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)
• 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

Books

• Oliveros, Pauline (2005), Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice, New York: iUniverse, Inc., ISBN 978-0595343652 .

• Oliveros, Pauline (1998), Roots of the Moment, New York: Drogue Press, ISBN 978-0962845642 .

• Oliveros, Pauline (1984), Software for People: Collected Writings 1963-80, Baltimore: Printed Editions, ISBN 978-0914162599 .

• Oliveros, Pauline (1982), Initiation Dream, Los Angeles: Astro Artz, ISBN 978-0937122075 .

Notable students

• Sidney Corbett
• Andrew Deutsch
• Paul Dresher
• Alexina Louie
• Jennifer & Kevin McCoy

Films

• 1976 - Music With Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television. Tape 5: Pauline Oliveros. Produced and directed by Robert Ashley. New York, New York: Lovely Music.
• 1993 - The Sensual Nature of Sound: 4 Composers - Laurie Anderson, Tania León, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros. Directed by Michael Blackwood.
• 2001 - Roulette TV: Pauline Oliveros. Roulette Intermedium Inc.
• 2005 - Unyazi Of The Bushveld. Directed by Aryan Kaganof. Produced by African Noise Foundation

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
• Art of the States: Pauline Oliveros two works by the composer
• Excerpt from 2001 sound. at the Schindler House performance at SASSAS @ YouTube

References

External links

• Official website
• Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening
• 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