The Center For Deep Listening

A Year of Deep Listening

A Year of Deep Listening is a 365-day celebration of the legacy of Pauline Oliveros, and what would have been her 90th birthday. The Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer is publishing one text score per day—online and across social media platforms—beginning on Oliveros’ 90th birthday: May 30, 2022.

The scores have been offered by the community of listeners who have been touched by the philosophy and practice of Deep Listening. In addition to marking and celebrating Oliveros’ 90th birthday, this project is an attempt to explore what listening can make possible in the context of our current moment…

We are all ears!

Follow the project below, or on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Day 308 of A Year of Deep Listening

NOSTALGIA, by Bobby Barry

Bobby Barry is a writer and composer based in London. His music has been released by Bloxham Tapes and WIAIWYA. His most recent book is called Compact Disc (Bloomsbury).

Day 307 of A Year of Deep Listening

gê morphḗ lógos (for objects in a landscape), by John Grzinich

To be performed outside in the open environment of your choice.

John Grzinich (US/Estonia) has worked since the early 1990s as an artist and cultural coordinator with various practices combining sound, moving image, site-specificity, and collaborative social structures. He is currently a visiting Associate Professor of New Media in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Day 306 of A Year of Deep Listening

PLANTING A SEED, by Shelley Burgon

Shelley Burgon is a harpist, composer and sound artist, specializing in experimental music. She has an extensive history as an improvisor and an interpreter new classical music; performing the works of composers such as Pauline Oliveros, Anthony Braxton, Yoko Ono, James Tenney, Berio and Bjork. Her music has been commissioned by The Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Ne(x)tworks, and multimedia artist Katherine Behar. Shelley received her MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College where she studied with Pauline Oliveros, Maryanne Amacher, Fred Frith and Alvin Curran.

Day 305 of A Year of Deep Listening

LOVE SONG TO THE OCEAN, by Livia Schweizer

The idea for this little simple score came last December, from a beach in West Africa. The Ocean every morning was bringing to the sunlight on the beach a countless amount of seashells. Each walk on the beach I could not resist the temptation to put few of them in my pocket. Every shell has its own shape, some are beautifully showing on the surface how the erosion changed their shape. Shells are a beautiful reminder of the passing time and of the transformation of things. Every shell makes its own sound and this is a love song for the seashells, and from them.

Italian-Swiss flutist Livia Schweizer is a freelancer and music teacher based in Helsinki. Livia is especially interested in how music can be a medium to connect with the environment.S he is active in several contemporary and experimental ensembles including Eloa, Earth Ears Ensemble and Septad. She is member of the Helsinki Chamber Orchestra and has worked with several Finnish orchestras. Livia has a master in flute and music pedagogy from Sibelius Academy, where she studied with Mikael Helasvuo and Hanna Kinnunen. In 2019 she has been exchange student at USC,Los Angeles in Jim Walker’s class

Day 304 of A Year of Deep Listening

INSTRUCTION NO. 18, by Emma Mehta

BE THE SEA is a collaboration between artist Louise Mackenzie, composer Hayley Jenkins, Durham Wildlife Trust and a growing community of participants based along the coast between the rivers Tyne and Tees in the North East of England, UK. BE THE SEA foregrounds listening strategies to ask how we can live with the coast in ways that are mutually sustainable.

Day 303 of A Year of Deep Listening

COLLECTIVE MIND, by Alexis Porfiriadis

The verbal piece ‘Collective Mind’ is part of the collection of verbal scores ‘Words for Sounds’ (2010-19).

PhD in Composition at Bath Spa University/UK, master’s degree and postgraduate diploma in Composition at the University for Music and Performing Arts Graz/Austria. Since 2008 his compositions consist mainly of verbal/graphic open form scores or combinations of conventional notation with verbal and/or graphic notation. Selected prizes and awards: 1st Prize in the Franco Evangelisti International Composition Competition 2020, 3d Prize in the Second International Composition Competition for String Quartet by Molinari Quartet 2005, State grand for Composition of the Republic of Austria 2003-04. http://alexisporfiriadis.blogspot.com/

Day 301 of A Year of Deep Listening

MINDFUL SINGING, by Jim Dalton

American composer Jim Dalton is a professor of music theory at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. His works are performed throughout the US, Canada, and in Europe, including venues such as Musique Nouvelles, Lunel, France; the Kansas Symposium of New Music; Sound: Scotland’s Festival of New Music; and Akademie der Tonkunst (Darmstadt, Germany). He has recent premieres by Aaron Larget-Caplan, Carson Cooman, Sharan Leventhal, Stephen Altoft, Transient Canvas, and Scottish Voices.
Dalton is a frequent guest lecturer in microtonality/just intonation.

Day 300 of A Year of Deep Listening

HEAR THE SOUND OF YOUR PRESENCE IN THE WORLD, by Tristan Partridge

Tristan Partridge is a social anthropologist and photographer exploring how experiences of sound and intersubjectivity shape critical approaches to art, activism, and humanistic research. Working with the concept of aural anthropology, these explorations attend to sound as a medium that generates, complicates, and sustains relationality. Solo and collaborative projects include A Wake of Starry Tongues, In Posterface, and Coagulars; works have been performed internationally including at Echo Park Rising (Los Angeles, California) and //BUZZCUT// (Glasgow, Scotland).

Day 299 of A Year of Deep Listening

BODILY LISTENING IN PLACE, by Ellen Waterman

Pauline Oliveros taught us that listening is not hearing. In consultation with Deaf artist collective SPiLL PROpagation, I created this score to develop a more expansive, intersensory and inclusive concept of listening beyond audition. Full score including video with ASL is available at https://naisa.ca/media-archive/sound-art-text-scores/bodily-listening-in-place/ 

A music and sound studies scholar and a flutist specializing in creative improvisation, Ellen Waterman is Professor and Helmut Kallmann Chair for Music in Canada at Carleton University. With Gillian Siddall, she is co-editor of Negotiated Moments: Improvisation, Sound, and Subjectivity (Duke). Ellen is founder and director of the Research Centre for Music, Sound, and Society in Canada, dedicated to exploring the complex and diverse roles that music and sonic arts play in shaping Canadian society. www.carleton.ca/mssc Her current research interests include community-engaged research-creation methodologies, and the sociality of listening.