Pauline Oliveros's (1932-2016) life as a composer, performer, and humanitarian was about opening her own and others' sensibilities to the universe and facets of sounds. Her career spanned fifty years of boundary-dissolving music-making. In the 50s, she was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, artists, and poets who gathered together in San Francisco. In the 1960s, she influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth, and ritual.
She was the recipient of four Honorary Doctorates and among her many recent awards were the William Schuman Award for Lifetime Achievement, Columbia University, New York; The Giga-Hertz-Award for Lifetime Achievement in Electronic Music from ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; and The John Cage award from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts. Oliveros was Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and Darius Milhaud Artist-in-Residence at Mills College.
She founded "Deep Listening®," which came from her childhood fascination with sounds and from her works in concert music with composition, improvisation, and electro-acoustics. Oliveros described Deep Listening as "a way of listening in every possible way, to everything possible, to hear no matter what you are doing." Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, and of one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds. "Deep Listening is my life practice," Oliveros explained, simply.
Oliveros founded Deep Listening Institute, formerly Pauline Oliveros Foundation, now the Center For Deep Listening at Rensselaer, Troy, NY. Her creative work is currently disseminated through The Pauline Oliveros Trust and the Ministry of Maåt, Inc.
