Composer Pauline Oliveros
Does a 12-hour Deep Listening session sound to you like a grueling, interminable borefest of passive avant-garde pretense, or do you conceive of your life as essentially a +/-657,000-hour Deep Listening session? The great composer Pauline Oliveros, a celebrated figure of the American avant-garde, is not interested in straight-backed Calvinistic rigor and asceticism; beanbags and cushions will be made available for the lounging deep listener, as will coffee, tea and the poignantly vague “light refreshments.” And, as the press release also emphasizes, the door will not be locked from the outside after the audience is assembled. Quiet coming and going are permitted.
Further, Oliveros encourages an active, collaborative model of Deep Listening. Listeners are invited to paint, sketch and knit during the term of the listening. With the wisdom of someone who doesn’t assume that one medium transposes directly or consistently to another, Oliveros does not require or even suggest that your knittings and sketchings have anything to do with the music. Jones, knit me a tuba! Sharing the time and space with the music is correspondence enough.
The 12-hour listening marathon of Pauline Oliveros’ Reverberations: Electronic and Tape Music 1961-1970, a 2012 box-set release on Important Records, takes place on Saturday, March 2 from 12 noon to 12 midnight at the Deep Listening Space, located in Suite 303 of the Shirt Factory at 77 Cornell Street in Kingston. This event is dedicated to the memory of Dara Greenwald (1971-2012), a member of the Deep Listening Community. For more information, call (845) 338-5984 or visit www.deeplistening.org.
