Accordion and Voice

"Oliveros's music makes you listen afresh to the simplest sounds." - NEW YORK TIMES

Pauline Oliveros(b.1930) is an accordionist and composer who currently resides in Kingston, New York. Her instrument is tuned in Just Intonation and she often includes it in her meditative improvisational music. Her music is not meditative in the sense that it is intended for listening to while mediatating, rather each piece is a form of mediation, such as her aptly titled Sonic Meditations. A central figure in post-war electronic art music, Oliveros is one of the original members of the San Franicsco Tape Music Center(along with Morton Subotnick, Ramon Sender, Terry Riley, and Anthony Martin), which was the electronic music resource on the US Wesst Coast during the 1960s. The center later moved to Mills College, where she was its first director, and it is now called the Center for Contemporary Music. In her performances and recordings, Oliveros often improvises with the Expanded Instrument System, an electronic signal processing system she designed.