In Interview:
"Composer, accordionist, educator, Pauline Oliveros talks about landscapes, soundscapes, the history of ambient music and the future of the recital hall."
Interview with Marc Weidenbaum
Doktorski: Hi Pauline!
Oliveros: Hi Henry!
Doktorski: I thought your CD "Deep Listening" was tremendous; a really fabulous experience, actually.
Interview with Henry Doktorski in The Free-Reed Journal
In Performance:
PAULINE OLIVEROS at MECA
Houston, Texas - May 12, 2000
Solo, Duo, and Ensemble Improvisations
In Observation of Mother's Day
Comments and concert photos by Frank Rubolino
"On some level, music, sound consciousness and religion are all
one, and she would seem to be very close to that level."
John Rockwell, The New York Times
"As lonely as a Texas prairie, it was the most ethereal and sensitive
Oliveros performance I'd heard, and, as usual, a benediction."
Kyle Gann, The Village Voice
"Pauline Oliveros (assisted by Peter Ward) in one her mystical,
shimmering sonic meditations, consisting of accordion playing augmented
by a tape loop and other electronic trickery. it was intense and moving."
John Rockwell, The New York Times
"Her solo accordion work "Rattlesnake Mountain" was a simple,
haunting melody over a pulsating drone. Few composers can summon such gentle
majesty from this instrument."
Tim Page, The New York Times
"The very life-force of the jungle seemed to spring forth from
the music -- With Pauline, you are sitting beneath a tree and composing
yourself into utter calm and listening with rapt attention and silent mind
to all the sounds of life erupting and transforming around you."
Ron Drummond, Uncle Jam
"Miss Oliveros held our attention with sensuous layers of sound.
it was music to soothe and gently lift the senses."
Bernard Holland, The New York Times
"Oliveros' music makes you listen afresh to the simplest sounds."
Burt Supree, The Village Voice
In Print:
Software for People
"inside the book is a treasury, a cornucopia, some {pieces} complex,
some approachable; the simplicity is deceptive, the layers myriad."
Barbara Golden, Ear Magazine of New Music
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On Recordings:
Dusted Magazine
Weekly Record Reviews
"In their hushed intensity and breadth of vision, Pauline
Olivero’s Deep Listening works for accordion and spatial processing (or
actual physical reverberant spaces) have become a benchmark, even if relatively
unlauded, of American music in the last half of the 20th century."
Pogus
Productions reviews Alien Bog and Beautiful Soop
"When this Pogus CD arrived it was a revelation to me, in
all its whole-wheat fullness, its nutritious electronic horn of plenty,
in full length displays of early American experiments in electronic music,
beautiful as it’s ever going to be, molded by the fantasy and determination
of Pauline Oliveros back in the 1960s; those days of joyous ingenuity
and senseless creativity!"
Sonic
Youth Goodbye 20th Century
"Along with more renowned modern composers like John Cage, Steve
Reich and Pauline Oliveros, Sonic Youth and company play pieces by Stockhausen
protégé Cornelius Cardrew, experimental violinist Takehisha Kosugi (who
performs on the album), and atonal- chromaticist James Tenney... Other
highlights include "Six for a New Time," a piece that Pauline Oliveros
composed specifically for the occasion..."
Brent S. Sirota
Sonic Youth Goodbye 20th Century
"Oliveros's "Six for New Time" (the one new piece written explicitly for this project) is a lopsided, subdivided hexagon with various instructions written at its points and along its axis..."
Jon Garelick
www.checkout.com
"Avant-garde composer Pauline Oliveros pioneered the concept of Deep Listening, an
aesthetic based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and
meditation designed to inspire both trained and untrained performers to practice the art of
listening and responding to environmental conditions in solo and ensemble situations."
Non-Stop Flight with the Deep Listening Band
Oliveros views the multiplicity of sounds around us as a "grand composition" and she has dedicated herself to exploring and teaching the perceptual skills needed for appreciating this global "sound environment"
The Wheel of Time
Excerpt from the beginning of The Wheel of Time, by Pauline Oliveros. This excerpt is from a 1983 performance at the California Institute of the Arts' Contemporary Music Festival.
I of IV
"One of the first compositions using a tape delay and feedback system was written by electronic composer Pauline Oliveros. Instead of simple closed tape loops, a combination of two tape recorders was used, similar to the setup that 6 years later, Eno and Fripp used on their first collaboration."
Michael Peters
The Well and The Gentle
"By turns reflective and dramatic, "the Well" is a work of subtle
beauty, and it's hard to imagine a more effective. sympathetic performance
than the one given by Reläche. Oliveros' solo recordings --- have
to be heard to be believed. With a solo accordion and the space itself,
she creates an amazing sonic experience."
John Schaefer, WNYC Radio, New York
The Wanderer
"---A knockout piece given a knockout performance--- Both pieces
are quite beautiful---What one hears in the piece is a large group of accordion
players having a great time playing challenging and thoughtful music which
makes no concessions to either contemporary fashion or the presumed intractability
of the instrument."
Larry Polansky, Option Magazine
Sleepers
"----A soft spongy sound that never thickens or gets overbearing
despite the evident piling up or intermixing of voices. It's a magic trick
and it works."
Leighton Kerner, The Village Voice
Accordion and Voice
"A particularly beautiful example of experimentalism --- genuine
musical individuality."
John Rockwell, The New York Times
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