Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016)[2] was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music.

She 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.

[8] There, Oliveros met theoretical physicist and karate master Lester Ingber, with whom she collaborated in defining the attentional process as applied to music listening.

In 1981, to escape creative constriction,[15] she left her tenured position as full Professor of Music at University of California, San Diego[16] and relocated to upstate New York to become an independent composer, performer, and consultant.

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.

[18] In 1988, as a result of descending 14 feet (4.3 m) into the Dan Harpole underground cistern in Port Townsend, Washington, to make a recording, Oliveros coined the term "deep listening"[8]—a pun that has blossomed into "an aesthetic based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation.

This aesthetic is designed to inspire both trained and untrained performers to practice the art of listening and responding to environmental conditions in solo and ensemble situations".

The Deep Listening Band, which included Oliveros, David Gamper (1947–2011) and Stuart Dempster, specializes in performing and recording in resonant or reverberant spaces such as caves, cathedrals and huge underground cisterns.

A celebratory concert was held on March 11, 2015, at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

[21] Heidi Von Gunden[22] names a new musical theory developed by Oliveros, "sonic awareness", and describes it as "the ability to consciously focus attention upon environmental and musical sound", requiring "continual alertness and an inclination to be always listening" and which she describes as comparable to John Berger's concept of visual consciousness (as in his Ways of Seeing).

[6] She contributed a chapter to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a.