Pauline Oliveros

Oliveros was born in Houston, Texas in 1932.{{Cite web|title=Pauline Oliveros – American musician and composer|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pauline-Oliveros|access-date=2020-08-05|website=Encyclopædia Britannica}} She was of Tejana descent. She started to play music as early as kindergarten, and at nine years of age she began to play the accordion, received from her mother, a pianist, because of its popularity in the 1940s.Baker, Alan. [http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/interview_oliveros.html "An interview with Pauline Oliveros"]. January 2003. American Mavericks American Public Media. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080517072221/http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/interview_oliveros.html |date=2008-05-17 }} She later 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.Service, Tom. [https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2012/may/07/guide-contemporary-music-pauline-oliveros "A guide to Pauline Oliveros's music"]. The Guardian.

Oliveros arrived in California and supported herself with a day job, and supplemented this by giving accordion lessons. From there Oliveros went on to attend the University of Houston, studying with Willard A. Palmer.

While attending the University of Houston, she was a member of the band program and helped form the Tau chapter of Tau Beta Sigma Honorary Band Sorority.

She earned a BFA degree in composition from San Francisco State College, where her teachers included composer Robert Erickson, with whom she had private lessons and who mentored her for six to seven years. This is also where she met artists Terry Riley, Stuart Dempster and Loren Rush.Smith, Steve. [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/arts/music/the-composer-pauline-oliveros-stays-busy-at-80.html "Strange Sounds Led a Composer to a Long Career"]. The New York Times.

When Oliveros turned 21, she obtained her first tape recording deck, which led to her creating her own pieces and future projects in this field. Oliveros was one of the original members of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, which was an important resource for electronic music on the U.S. West Coast during the 1960s.Amirkhanian, Charles. [http://www.dramonline.org/albums/new-music-for-electronic-and-recorded-media-women-in-electronic-music-1977-2/notes "Women in Electronic Music – 1977"]. Liner note essay. New World Records. The Center later moved to Mills College, with Oliveros serving as its first director; it was renamed the Center for Contemporary Music.{{cite book|author1=Thomas B. Holmes|author2=Thom Holmes|title=Electronic and Experimental Music: Pioneers in Technology and Composition|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ILkquoGXEq0C&pg=PA192|year=2002|publisher=Psychology Press|isbn=978-0-415-93644-6|pages=192–}}

Oliveros often improvised with the Expanded Instrument System, an electronic signal processing system she designed, in her performances and recordings.{{cite book|author=Paul Sanden|title=Liveness in Modern Music: Musicians, Technology, and the Perception of Performance|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ICg7FAZ2UyMC&pg=PA110|year=2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-415-89540-8|pages=110–}} Oliveros held Honorary Doctorates in Music from the University of Maryland (Baltimore County), Mills College (Oakland, California), and De Montfort University (Leicester, England, UK).

In 1967, Oliveros left Mills to take a faculty music department position at the University of California, San Diego. There, Oliveros met theoretical physicist and karate master Lester Ingber, with whom she collaborated in defining the attentional process as applied to music listening.{{Cite web|url=http://paulineoliveros.us/site/node/47|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090530145802/http://paulineoliveros.us/site/node/47|url-status=dead|title=Pauline Oliveros. Deep Listening: A Bridge To Collaboration. (1998)|archive-date=May 30, 2009}} 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,{{Citation |title=Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook|last=Sitsky|first=Larry|author-link=Larry Sitsky|year=2002 |publisher=Greenwood Press |isbn=0-313-29689-8 |page=346 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9-M_jhnOuboC&pg=PA346 }} she left her tenured position as full Professor of Music at University of California, San Diego{{Cite web|url=http://paulineoliveros.us/site/node/15|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090125220424/http://paulineoliveros.us/site/node/15|url-status=dead|title=Pauline Oliveros. Curriculum Vitae|archive-date=January 25, 2009}} 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.Gagne, Cole. Soundpieces 2: Interviews with American Composers. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1993, p. 215. {{ISBN| 0-8108-2710-7}} She sings and plays the retuned accordion (without electronics) in the 1993 opera [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXcfBsBUOWs 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.{{Cite web|url=http://avatarorchestra.blogspot.com/|title=AOM at the Network Music Festival, Birmingham, UK September 28, 2014|website=Avatarorchestra.blogspot.com|date=October 16, 2020}}

File:OliverosOM20.jpg

In 1988, as a result of descending {{convert|14|feet}} into the Dan Harpole underground cistern in Port Townsend, Washington, to make a recording, Oliveros coined the term "deep listening"—a pun that has blossomed into "an aesthetic based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation. This aesthetic is designed to inspire both trained and untrained performers to practice the art of listening and responding to environmental conditions in solo and ensemble situations".Ankeny, Jason. [http://player.listenlive.co/24971/en/artist/97_MN0000522041/biography "Pauline Oliveros Biography".] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141026030437/http://player.listenlive.co/24971/en/artist/97_MN0000522041/biography |date=2014-10-26 }} [http://www.985kissfm.net 98.5 Kiss FM.] 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 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. The Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer (CDL@RPI), initially under the direction of Tomie Hahn, is now established and 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 the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.{{cite web|url=http://www.hass.rpi.edu/pl/news-s17/?objectID=1608|title=Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer Opening Celebration March 11 at EMPAC – School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)|access-date=30 November 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161127152356/http://www.hass.rpi.edu/pl/news-s17/?objectID=1608|archive-date=27 November 2016|url-status=dead}} Stephanie Loveless is the current director of the CDL@RPI.{{Cite web|title=About Us – The Center For Deep Listening|url=https://www.deeplistening.rpi.edu/about-us/|access-date=2022-01-24|language=en-US}}

File:Pauline Oliveros - Sonic Acts 2012 - 6931630363.jpg

Heidi Von GundenVon Gunden, Heidi (1983). The Music of Pauline Oliveros, p. 105. Scarecrow Press. {{ISBN|0-8108-1600-8}}. Foreword by Ben Johnston. 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).Von Gunden, Heidi (Autumn 1980 – Summer 1981). "The Theory of Sonic Awareness in The Greeting by Pauline Oliveros", Perspectives of New Music, vol. 19, no. 1/2, p. 409. 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",Von Gunden (1980), p. 410. and describes two ways of processing information, "attention and awareness", or focal attention and global attention, which may be represented by a dot and circle, respectively, a symbol Oliveros commonly employs in compositions such as Rose Moon (1977) and El Rilicario de los Animales (1979). (The titles of Oliveros' pieces Rose Moon and Rose Mountain refer to her romantic partner Linda Montano having gone by Rose Mountain at one time.Von Gunden (1983), pp. 128–129.) Later this representation was expanded, with the symbol quartered and the quarters representing "actively making sound", "actually imagining sound", "listening to present sound" and "remembering past sound", with this model used in Sonic Meditations.Von Gunden (1980), p. 412. Practice of the theory creates "complex sound masses possessing a strong tonal center".Von Gunden (1980), p. 411.

She was openly lesbian.{{citation|title=Lesbian American Composers |periodical=The Advocate |date=May 26, 1998 |first=Allan |last=Ulrich |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1589/is_n760/ai_20620450 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050521032008/http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1589/is_n760/ai_20620450 |url-status=dead |archive-date=May 21, 2005}} In 1975 Oliveros met her eventual partner, performance artist Linda Montano.Mockus, Martha (2007). Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality, p. 96. Routledge. {{ISBN|978-0-415-97376-2}} (paperback), {{ISBN|978-0-415-97375-5}} (hardback), {{ISBN|978-0-203-93559-0}} (electronic). 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).{{cite web |last1=IONE |title=Pauline Oliveros |url=https://bombmagazine.org/articles/bomb-retrospective-the-legacy-of-pauline-oliveros/ |website=BOMB Magazine |access-date=20 January 2024}} The couple worked together on several major musical theatre productions, dance operas, and films.{{cite web |last1=Hogg |first1=Rhona |title=IONE - Bio |url=https://www.banffcentre.ca/fr/profiles/ione |website=Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity |access-date=20 January 2024}} They were influential figures in their community. Sound artist and experimental turntablist Maria Chavez, a friend and mentee of Pauline, describes Pauline and Ione: "when you saw them together, you saw love."{{cite web |last1=Skolnick |first1=Sara |title=A Tribute to Pauline Oliveros, the Queer Tejana Who Revolutionized Experimental Music |url=https://remezcla.com/features/music/pauline-oliveros-maria-chavez-interview/ |website=Remezcla |access-date=20 January 2024}}

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

She died in 2016 in Kingston, New York.

• 1994 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award{{cite web|title=Pauline Oliveros|url=https://www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/recipients/pauline-oliveros/|website=Foundation for Contemporary Arts|access-date=28 October 2021}}
• 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
• In 2025, Long Beach Opera dedicated its entire season to the works of Pauline Oliveros, reflecting her growing posthumous influence and recognition as a pioneering composer and innovator in experimental music.{{Cite web |last=Swed |first=Mark |date=2025-02-05 |title=The late Pauline Oliveros is having her moment. How Long Beach Opera is making it even bigger |url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2025-02-05/long-beach-opera-pauline-oliveros |access-date=2025-04-30 |website=Los Angeles Times |language=en-US}}

• 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,{{clarify|date=October 2021|reason=ibid. where? Big Deal?}} p. 141)
• Echoes from the Moon (1987) which uses Earth–Moon–Earth communication or "moonbounce"{{Cite journal |last=Barrett |first=G Douglas |date=2021 |title=Deep (Space) Listening: Posthuman Moonbounce in Pauline Oliveros's Echoes from the Moon |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/810823 |journal=Discourse |volume=43 |issue=3 |pages=321 |doi=10.13110/discourse.43.3.0321|url-access=subscription }}
• Crone Music (1989)
• Six for New Time (1999), music score for Sonic Youth
• "the Space Between with Matthew Sperry", (2003) 482Music

• {{cite book | last=Oliveros | first=Pauline | title=Anthology of Text Scores by Pauline Oliveros 1971–2013 | publisher=Deep Listening Publications | place=Kingston, New York | year=2013 | editor=Sam Golter and Lawton Hall |isbn= 9781889471228|ref=none}}
• {{cite book | last=Oliveros | first=Pauline | title=Sounding the Margins: Collected Writings 1992–2009 | publisher=Deep Listening Publications | place=Kingston, New York | year=2010 | editor=Lawton Hall | isbn=978-1-889471-16-7|ref=none|author-mask=1}}
• {{cite book | last=Oliveros | first=Pauline | title=Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice | publisher=iUniverse, Inc. | place=New York | year=2005 | isbn=978-0-595-34365-2|ref=none|author-mask=1}}
• {{cite book | last=Oliveros | first=Pauline | title=Roots of the Moment | publisher=Drogue Press | place=New York | year=1998 | isbn=978-0-9628456-4-2|ref=none|author-mask=1}}
• {{cite book | last=Oliveros | first=Pauline | title=Software for People: Collected Writings 1963–80 | publisher=Printed Editions | place=Baltimore | year=1984 | isbn=978-0-914162-59-9|ref=none|author-mask=1}}
• {{cite book | last=Oliveros | first=Pauline | title=Initiation Dream | publisher=Astro Artz | place=Los Angeles | year=1982 | isbn=978-0-937122-07-5|ref=none|author-mask=1}}

She 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.

• 1976 – Music with Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television. Tape 5: Pauline Oliveros. Produced and directed by Robert Ashley. 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.
• 2020 – Sisters with Transistors. Directed by Lisa Rovner.

Annie Sprinkle’s 1992 production The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop – Or How To Be A Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps, which was co-produced and co-directed with videographer Maria Beatty, featured music by Oliveros.

Some of her music was featured in the 2014 French video game NaissanceE.{{Cite web | title=About | url=http://www.naissancee.com/?page_id=2 | publisher=Limasse Five | access-date=21 October 2014 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140905200224/http://www.naissancee.com/?page_id=2 | archive-date=5 September 2014 | url-status=dead }} {{Self-published source|date=October 2014}}

Oliveros' work Deep Listening Room was featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.Whitney Museum of American Art. "103 Participants Selected for 2014 Whitney Biennial, To Take Place March 7 – May 25, 2014". Whitney.org. N.p., 14 November 2013. Web.{{clarify|date=October 2021|reason=If this is cited from the 'Web', there should be a URL.}} 1 February 2014.

{{For LMST|Pauline|Oliveros}}

{{reflist|30em}}

• Duckworth, William, Talking Music, New York: Schirmer Books, 1995. {{ISBN| 0-02-870823-7}}
• 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.

{{External links|date=October 2021}}

• {{Official website|http://paulineoliveros.us}}
• [http://www.deeplistening.org/ Deep Listening Institute]
• [http://www.pofinc.org/ Pauline Oliveros Foundation] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030804175507/http://pofinc.org/ |date=2003-08-04 }}
• [https://archive.today/20121214220124/http://arts.rpi.edu/index.php?siteid=3&pageid=59&personID=38&deptid=2&pgid=1 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: Faculty and Staff: Pauline Oliveros, Clinical Professor], Arts Department, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
• [http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/articles/oliveros/sonicrituals1.php The Sonic Rituals of Pauline Oliveros] by Ron Drummond
• [http://media.hyperreal.org/zines/est/intervs/oliveros.html EST Interview] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160123075655/http://media.hyperreal.org/zines/est/intervs/oliveros.html |date=2016-01-23 }}
• [http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=1022 Pauline Oliveros in conversation with Frank J. Oteri] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051102125210/http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=1022 |date=2005-11-02 }}
• [http://acousmata.com/post/114399644/alien-bog Listen to an excerpt of Oliveros' Alien Bog at Acousmata music blog]
• [http://www.bruceduffie.com/oliveros.html Interview with Pauline Oliveros] by Bruce Duffie, April 5, 1996
• [http://felbick.de/diverses Interview with Pauline Oliveros] by Lutz Felbick, July 10, 1999
• [http://libraries.ucsd.edu/speccoll/findingaids/mss0102.html Pauline Oliveros Papers] MSS 102. [http://libraries.ucsd.edu/collections/sca/ Special Collections & Archives], UC San Diego Library
• [http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b16514432~S1 Pauline Oliveros Papers] in the [http://www.nypl.org/locations/lpa/music-division Music Division] of [http://www.nypl.org/locations/lpa The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts]
• [http://www.ubu.com/film/oliveros.html Pauline Oliveros' entry], UbuWeb Film
• [http://www.ubu.com/sound/oliveros.html Pauline Oliveros' entry], UbuWeb Sound
• [https://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/pauline-oliveros Pauline Oliveros Interview – NAMM Oral History Library (2016)]
• [http://www.documenta14.de/en/artists/13585/pauline-oliveros exhibit in Athens, Greece], documenta 14, featuring many of Oliveros's manuscripts

• [http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~larry/dear.john/DearJohnNotes.html Dear.John: A Canon on the Name of Cage] on Larry Polansky's Home Page
• [http://www.epitonic.com/artists/#/artists/pauline-oliveros-stuart-dempster-and-panaiotis/ Epitonic.com: Deep Listening Band] featuring a track from Deep Listening
• {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20050220122500/http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/composer.pl?comp=92 Art of the States: Pauline Oliveros]}}, two works by the composer
• {{YouTube|r-X4raYLHPE|Excerpt from 2001 sound. at the Schindler House performance}} at SASSAS

{{Deep Listening}}

{{Gaudeamus International Composers Award}}

{{SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award}}

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