Pauline Oliveros Dead at 84

Pauline Oliveros, an accomplished composer, accordionist, and experimental music pioneer, has died, according to Red Bull Music Academy and FACT. She was 84.

Born in 1932, Oliveros was a multi-instrumentalist who later became a composer and performer. She was also a noted author and philosopher. In the early ‘60s, Oliveros was an integral member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center. In the late ‘80s, she coined the term “Deep Listening,” and later went on to found the Deep Listening Institute (now the Center For Deep Listening).

Oliveros’ album Accordion and Voice (1982) and her Stuart Dempster and Panatois collaboration Deep Listening (1989) are considered landmark ambient records. At the time of her death, she was the Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Darius Milhaud Artist-in-Residence at Mills College. A distinguished explorer of sound, she shared thoughts on deep listening, tape improv, and teaching with Pitchfork in 2011. “I feel that students always learn more from each other than they do from their professor,” she said. “They learn by doing.”

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