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Pauline Oliveros, Professor of Composition, Talks About 'Deep Listening'
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Program Notes for the 3/14/99 performance
From Roots of
the Moment (book with CD)
by Pauline Oliveros
Excerpt from Deep Hockets
Non Stop Flight
• 56k modem (slower)
• 112k ISDN (faster)
- - John Cage, 1989
David Gamper, keyboards and electronics
Pauline Oliveros, accordion and electronics
Stuart Dempster, trombone and didjeridu
Bob Bielecki, sound designer
"As a musician, I am interested in the sensual nature of sound, its power of release and change. In my performances throughout the world I try to transmit to the audience the way I am experiencing sound as I hear it and play it in a style that I call deep listening. Deep listening is listening in every possible way to every thing possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep listening is my life practice."
That's how Pauline Oliveros, professor of composition, describes her practice of "deep listening," in her book with CD, The Roots of the Moment, published in 1998 by Drogue Press. The book combines musical compositions, poetry, philosophy and how-to strategies for listening to and creating sound.
She also wrote, "The way one chooses to listen to music or daily living is a factor in the quality of one's experience. Listening is a process. It can be like a bolt of lightning all at once in the moment or it consists of good intuitive guesses and thoughtful references to past experience. Raw listening has no past or future. It has the potential of instantaneously changing the listener forever. It is the roots of the moment."
The Deep Listening Band is comprised of David Gamper (keyboards and electronics), Stuart Dempster (trombone and didjeridu), Pauline Oliveros (accordion and electronics), and Bob Bielecki (sound designer). The group was on campus for a week-long residency, March 6-14. Stuart Dempster has written that the group "was formed by accident in October, 1988, while recording the award-winning Deep Listening CD in a two million gallon cistern with a reverberation time of 45 seconds." The cistern was located on the Fort Warden military base, 70 miles northwest of Seattle. A few months later, the band recorded Trogodytes Delight in the Tarpaper Cave limestone quarry near Rosendale, New York, which is described by Dempster as having "lovely dripping water sounds and Valhalla-like mists."
"We're
always on the look out for interesting places to play,"
Oliveros said. "We're interested in the qualities of any
given space so that the space itself becomes a partner in
the performance. We've performed in a sunken lava cave in
the Canary Islands, and at the Panasonic Hall in Tokyo
surrounded by 750 loud speakers. We're currently working to
record in an incomplete, abandoned nuclear power plant in
Washington State."
Since 1988, the Deep Listening Band has produced seven recordings. Group members have performed worldwide as soloists, as members of the band, and with in collaborations with music, theater and dance groups. They also publish prolifically and teach (higher education institutions and arts organizations). Additionally, Oliveros established the Pauline Oliveros Foundation, Inc., in 1985. It's a non-profit program for the arts, based in Kingston, New York, that provides a venue for exhibitions, theatrical performances, readings, concerts, symposia, cutting edge technology, collaborative work, and "the enhancement of human kind through creative expression."
Oliveros has been honored with numerous awards, grants and fellowships. Most recently, she received the 1999 SEAMUS Award for Lifetime Achievement. SEAMUS is the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States. and each year, the organization honors musicians with the award in recognition of lifetime achievement and contribution to the art and craft of electro-acoustic music.
Richard Povall, director of the division of contemporary music and chair of the TIMARA program spoke of Oberlin's great fortune in successfully enticing Oliveros to campus, "Open positions in the Composition Department last year provided the opportunity to 'split' one position into two half-year appointment, with the understanding that these two half-positions would be filled by composers whose compositional plates were too full to take on a fulltime position. The result was the hiring of two remarkable American composers - John Luther Adams and Pauline Oliveros.
"Oliveros is a true 20th and 21st century pioneer. She has broken a multitude of new grounds in compositions during her extraordinary career, and in currently placing a major emphasis on increasing the profile - and quantity - of women composers. I am delighted that Pauline has chosen to affiliate herself and her work with Oberlin."
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