Pauline Oliveros

Avant-garde composer Pauline Oliveros originated the Deep Listening approach, an aesthetic rooted in improvisation, electronic music, ritual, pedagogy, and meditation that encourages both seasoned and novice musicians to hone the skill of attending to and interacting with surrounding sonic environments whether performing alone or in groups. She entered the world in Houston, Texas, on May 20, 1932, and obtained her initial training from her mother and grandmother; equally captivated by natural soundscapes, she resolved at a young age to devote herself to music, enrolling in composition studies at San Francisco State College during the early 1950s while performing French horn alongside pianist Terry Riley in an improvisational ensemble. Though she later gained renown chiefly for her mastery of the accordion, Oliveros became the inaugural director of the Tape Music Center at Mills College in the mid-1960s and then taught for fourteen years at the University of California at San Diego before moving to Kingston, New York, in 1981. Over the ensuing period she emerged as one of contemporary music’s most distinctive voices, first gaining attention through the “Sonic Meditations,” her initial efforts to integrate ambient sounds into compositional practice. That same principle animated the Deep Listening series, thirty works written between 1971 and 1990. In the mid-1980s she founded the Pauline Oliveros Foundation, which disseminated the Deep Listening philosophy via recordings, lectures, and retreats. Oliveros passed away in her sleep at her Kingston residence on November 24, 2016, at the age of 84.