David Dalle
Thursday December 1st, 2016 with David Dalle
Tribute to Pauline Oliveros, the radically gifted composer, performer, philosopher, who died last week. Music from Finnish Kimmo Pohjonen, Schubert, Cuban music.

Pauline Oliveros died on November 24th after six decades as one of America's most radical and gifted composers, performers and philosopher about music. Her chosen instrument was the accordion, but that hardly suffices to describe the enormous range of sound-making objects and electronic tools which she used with and as well as her accordion. Oliveros, who as a teenager already decided to be a composer, was gifted a tape recorder on her 21st birthday in 1951, and after listening to a recording she had made just outside her window, she realized that the microphone had captured so much that she had missed with her own ears. This was an epiphany which made her realize that her primary goal as a composer was to "Listen to everything all the time, and remind yourself when you are not listening". This simple, yet profound idea has informed all of her compositions, performances, and writing about music. Since the 1950's Oliveros has been firmly established as one of the central figures in the long tradition of American experimental composers such as Charles Ives, Harry Partch, John Cage, Terry Riley etc. though she has pursued her own, unique path. In the last three decades this has crystallized in her concept of "Deep Listening" which has given its name to her foundation, and her longest-lasting musical collaboration the "Deep Listening Band", a trio featuring Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, and David Gamper, which we hear today, in their last recording together, recorded live during a week long residency in Seattle Town Hall in January 2011. David Gamper died in September 2011. This recording features some of the mainstays of Oliveros' music, with Oliveros, Dempster, and Gamper on their respective acoustic instruments accordion, trombones, piano/flute, along with many other unusual sound makers. It also makes use of their Expanded Instrument System (EIS): "Expanded Instrument System (EIS) provides musicians and composers with a challenging improvisational environment for exploration of interactions with technology. EIS acts as a "time machine" where players provide the present moment of sounding that technology will feedback in the future either in replica or modification. The feedback becomes part of the present. Thus the player is performing in the past, present and future simultaneously. Furthermore sounds of the past, present and future are spatialized through a multi-channel array of speakers so that space is expanded in a similar manner with time." Pauline Oliveros had been developing the EIS since the mid 1960's starting with analog tape systems to her most recent digital setup with each musician having a laptop and various control devices and interfaces. Pauline Oliveros also wrote many essays and treatises on music as well as being a composer of purely electro-acoustic music, multi-media operas, community and social music, and a ferocious advocate for women composers. Hearing her perform with her Deep Listening Band was a great privilege, she will be sorely missed.