Pauline Oliveros was born on May 30, 1932 in Houston, Texas and died on November 24, 2016 in Kingston, New York. Pauline Oliveros’s life as a composer, performer, and humanitarian was about opening her own and other’s sensibilities to the world and facets of sound. She was mostly known as an electronic musician who played instruments, such as the accordion.

Oliveros went to attend the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston, studying with musician Willard A. Palmer and earned a BA in composition from San Francisco State College.

Along with composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick, Oliveros cofounded the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1961 and became the director of the center when it moved to Mills College in Oakland in the fall of 1966. She established a progressive, open-minded creative vision at the Mills Tape Music Center, which was later renamed the Center for Contemporary Music.

When Oliveros turned 21, she received her first tape recorder, which would lead to her creating her own pieces and future projects in this field. Oliveros was one of the original members of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, which was an important resource for electronic music during the 1960s. Oliveros often improvised with the Expanded Instrument System, a digital signal-processing system that she had designed, in her performances and recordings.

Haunts:

  • Pauline Oliveros ended up being the first director of the Mills Tape Music Center, which is amazing that a person who was so important to the electronic music industry worked at Mills College (5000 MacArthur Boulevard, Oakland, CA 94613). She made not only Mills College but also Oakland proud.

~ by Redeat Kibebew ~

External Links:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/arts/music/pauline-oliveros-composer-who-championed-deep-listening-dies-at-84.html

https://paulineoliveros.us/about.html

https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8dz0fc6/entire_text/

https://www.mills.edu/news/news-stories/mills-mourns-pauline-oliveros.php

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