11 December 2016 | 20:00

Sound Portraits #16: Pauline Oliveros

Doors: 19:30 / Start time: 20:00

Sound Portraits is a series of listening sessions, curated by Doron Sadja, focusing on the work of iconic composers who have paved the way for contemporary electronic music. After a short introduction of each artist's life and work, we will listen to a selection of excerpts and complete works from the artist’s repertoire. Besides providing an opportunity to introduce these seminal artists to a new audience, the Sound Portraits series also offers an open forum to engage in group listening in a quiet atmosphere. 

Tonight we celebrate the life and work of Pauline Oliveros, one of the most influential composers of the 20th and 21st century, who passed away just last week.

Read more about the series at http://sound-portraits.tumblr.com

Pauline Oliveros

A leader of the avant-garde and a pioneer of improvisatory music, alternate tuning systems, contemporary accordion playing, electronics and multimedia events, Oliveros continued to be a vital force through her performance and compositional practice from the early 60s all the way to her passing at age 84. Oliveros served as the first director of the storied San Francisco Tape Music Center, where she worked alongside renowned artists like Morton Subotnick, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Don Buchla, and John Cage to help shape electronic music in the US. In 1988 as a result of descending 14 feet into an underground cistern 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.”