# Pauline Oliveros [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Oliveros) (1932–2016) ## Description American composer and accordionist who developed Deep Listening, a practice and pedagogy of expanded sonic awareness, alongside decades of text scores, meditative performance pieces, and improvisation; a foundational figure of postwar American experimental music and an early institution-builder for electronic music on the West Coast. ## Key Tags #performance #sound #theorist #feminist #queer ## Essential Works - [Deep Listening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Listening_(album)) (1989) - album recorded in an underground cistern, foundational to her Deep Listening practice - [Sonic Meditations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Oliveros) (1974) - collection of text scores for group improvisation and listening practice ## Details Began as an accordionist and tape composer, co-founding the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1962 as an early hub for West Coast electronic music alongside Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender. Developed Deep Listening from the 1970s on as both a compositional method and a broader pedagogy — group exercises and text scores training performers and audiences toward a heightened, non-hierarchical awareness of all sound, environmental as well as musical. ### Concepts and Theories - [[Music Studies]] - her Deep Listening pedagogy is a major contribution to experimental music theory and practice ### Creative and Technical Practices %% none yet %% ### Collaborators %% none yet %% ### Institutional Affiliations and Associated Movements - [[San Francisco Tape Music Center]] (co-founder, 1962) - alongside Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender - [[Deep Listening Institute]] (founder) - organization built around her Deep Listening practice and pedagogy ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography Oliveros, Pauline. *Sonic Meditations*. Smith Publications, 1974. Oliveros, Pauline. *Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice*. iUniverse, 2005. ### Secondary Sources Bibliography %% none yet %%