Performance Archive

Pauline Oliveros, accordion; Anne Bourne, cello

Music Gallery, St. George the Martyr Church, September 14, 2007
X-Avant Festival, Toronto, Ontario

Composer, improviser and teacher Pauline Oliveros has had a profound effect on musicians around the world. In Canada, her Deep Listening philosophy has been studied and promoted by composers such as Gayle Young, Kathy Kennedy, and Anne Bourne. She is also an integral member of an interdisciplinary project on Improvisation, Community and Social Practice centred at the University of Guelph, in Ontario. Composer, cellist and vocalist Anne Bourne participated in the Deep Listening retreats on Rose Mountain New Mexico from 1994-2000, during which time Oliveros created a certificate program. She was one of the first seven to receive a Certificate to teach Deep Listening .

Oliveros describes Deep Listening as “a practice that is intended to heighten and expand consciousness of sound in as many dimensions of awareness and attentional dynamics as humanly possible” (Oliveros xxiii). It is an intensely musical practice, derived from Oliveros’ lifelong commitment to composing, improvising and performing music. For Bourne, her long time relationship with Oliveros and Deep Listening has helped to define her career:

In 1994 Lauren Pratt invited me to participate in a distance concert with Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening Band. A few of us at U. of Toronto, a group in Paris, and DLB at The Kitchen in New York. This was a satellite version of Oliveros' current Telematic research. When I saw Pauline on screen, I knew I had to meet her. Lauren sent a message for me, to which she replied 'Come to New Mexico.'

Early on during the summer Rose Mountain retreats, I also commuted monthly for one year to study with Ione, and Andrea Goodman (Meredith Monk) in upstate New York. Pauline was also present for these voice and sound meditation sessions, which became the context for my sonic anatomy/sonic architecture research. Pauline taught me how to cross a border with a cello, without causing suspicion. The NY sessions culminated in a journey to Egypt, where we sounded together in the enclosures of ancient sacred sites, to activate them as sounding chambers.

On one trip to New York, Pauline invited me to improvise with her, David Gamper and Julie Lyon, on a soundtrack for director Vicky Funari, which won Best Latino Film at Sundance.

In 1998 I improvised Oliveros' Primordial Lift in a live performance with Pauline, Tony Conrad, David Grubbs and Andrew Deutsch, released on Table of The Elements as a live recording. And remixed and mastered by Stephen Vitiello, it is a current release on the Deep Listening Label.

The same year, Pauline invited me to form a new quintet with Susie Ibarra and others, to debut in New York at Tonic. I had to decline as it was very close to the birth of my daughter. After my daughter was born I did perform as did Willa, in the Deep Listening Opera at Lincoln Centre.

After one of the last Rose Mountain retreats, we came down from the mountain to make a show at Plan B in Santa Fe for which I composed and performed a piece for Oliveros and Heloise Gold at Plan B. At the beginning of the piece I was holding my baby on my lap. Gayle Young then entered with my cello and took my daughter to the wings while I played. I believed in showing myself to be a mother who had a voice.

And most recently…I was Communications Producer, and performer for the 2008 Deep Listening Institute's Convergence: a sonic gesture of peace. I initiated contact with 40 musicians from around the world and coordinated the curation of three concerts, including one I curated and performed in. In this concert, I performed an improvised composition with Pauline, Heloise Gold and Renko Dempster, co-created with Abbie Conant called, Looking into the Eyes of a White Buffalo. Pauline played harmonica. (Bourne email)

The 2007 concert excerpted here was performed in the intimate space of St. George the Martyr Anglican Church in downtown Toronto, the home of the Music Gallery. It was part of a, then new, festival called X-Avant which recognizes pioneering creativity across a wide spectrum of musical styles. (See also our archival footage and article on Barnyard Drama at http://www.experimentalperformance.ca/archive/Barnyard.html) In their improvised acoustic duo, Oliveros played her specially modified just intonation accordion, and Bourne employed her particular combination of evocative vocals and cello drones. Oliveros notes that her performance practice is an extension of Deep Listening:

My performances as an improvising composer are especially informed by my Deep Listening practice. I do practice what I preach. When I arrive on stage I am listening and expanding to the whole of the space/time continuum of perceptible sound. I have no preconceived ideas. What I perceive as the continuum of sound and energy takes my attention and informs what I play. What I play is recognized consciously by me slightly (milliseconds) after I have played any sound. This altered state of consciousness in performance is exhilarating and inspiring. The music comes through as if I have nothing to do with it but allow it to emerge through my instrument and voice. It is even more exciting to practice, whether I am performing or just living out my daily life. (Oliveros xix)

In a 2006 interview with Sounds Provocative researcher, Scott Thomson, Anne Bourne described her approach to performance:

I’m listening with my whole body and testing the architecture of the space I’m putting sound into for resonance and then sending sounds into that space. I’m also testing for resonance in my own body as a listener, and opening up so that I can hear every movement of sound, even, in a sense, if thought is sound. I’m expressing unexpressed sound originating in those thoughts. Or listening for something that moves me to respond with sound. Or sending sound and listening for a response in an energetic way. I’m filling emptiness with coloured sound, moving emotion, responding to sensation. It’s kind of a presence of attention. It’s very experiential.…

My instrument of choice is to create two-note voicings between the cello and its overtones, and therefore sometimes more than one frequency. The sound coming from the cello is non-standard or extended techniques oriented in just intonation. I’m creating an array of frequencies from the cello and then tuning my voice to that and amplifying the hidden overtones that are in the cello sound with my voice. But I’m also trying in a larger sense to make a harmonic progression that is based loosely in elements of diatonic harmony (in the popular sense, in the song sense). I'm trying to make an architecture, sending lines of sound into the room to define the resonant space as a geometric shelter, as vibrant as skin. Each piece might be a song, but you wouldn't recognize it as a song etc. I think of them all as songs. I think of my improvisations as songs. But you wouldn’t hear a very earth-bound narrative or story in what I call a song. (Bourne, interview)

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Anne Bourne and Pauline Oliveros for their permission to document their concert and to put an excerpt on the Sounds Provocative web site.

Works Cited

Bourne, Anne. Email, July 5, 2009.

----. Interview with Scott Thomson, April 24, 2006.

Oliveros, Pauline. Deep Listening. A Composer’s Sound Practice. New York: Deep Listening Publications, 1995.