23 Facts About Pauline Oliveros

Pauline Oliveros was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music.

Pauline Oliveros was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s, and served as its director.

Pauline Oliveros taught music at Mills College, the University of California, San Diego, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Pauline Oliveros started to play music as early as kindergarten, and at nine years of age she began to play the accordion, received from her mother, a pianist, because of its popularity in the 1940s.

Pauline Oliveros later went on to learn violin, piano, tuba and French horn for grade school and college music.

Pauline Oliveros arrived in California and supported herself with a day job, and supplemented this by giving accordion lessons.

Pauline Oliveros earned a BFA degree in composition from San Francisco State College, where her teachers included composer Robert Erickson, with whom she had private lessons and who mentored her for six to seven years.

When Pauline Oliveros turned 21, she obtained her first tape recording deck, which led to her creating her own pieces and future projects in this field.

Pauline Oliveros was one of the original members of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, which was an important resource for electronic music on the US West Coast during the 1960s.

The Center later moved to Mills College, with Pauline Oliveros serving as its first director; it was renamed the Center for Contemporary Music.

Pauline Oliveros often improvised with the Expanded Instrument System, an electronic signal processing system she designed, in her performances and recordings.

Pauline Oliveros held Honorary Doctorates in Music from the University of Maryland, Mills College, and De Montfort University.

In 1967, Pauline Oliveros left Mills to take a faculty music department position at the University of California, San Diego.

Pauline Oliveros studied karate under Ingber, achieving black belt level.

In 1973, Pauline Oliveros conducted studies at the university's one-year-old Center for Music Experiment; she served as the center's director from 1976 to 1979.

In 1987, Pauline Oliveros had the tuning of her accordion changed from equal temperament to just intonation.

Pauline Oliveros was a member of Avatar Orchestra Metaverse, a global collaboration of composers, artists and musicians that approaches the virtual reality platform Second Life as an instrument itself.

Dempster, Oliveros and Panaiotis then formed the Deep Listening Band, and deep listening became a program of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation, founded in 1985.

The Pauline Oliveros Foundation changed its name to Deep Listening Institute, Ltd.

Pauline Oliveros discusses this theory in the "Introductions" to her Sonic Meditations and in articles.

In 1975 Pauline Oliveros met her eventual partner, performance artist Linda Montano.

The titles of Pauline Oliveros' pieces Rose Moon and Rose Mountain refer to Montano having gone by Rose Mountain at one time.

Pauline Oliveros was a patron of Soundart Radio in Dartington, Devon.