From PitchforkMedia.com 6/5/7
by Dominique Leone

Pauline Oliveros: Accordion & Voice [Vital; 1982; r: Important; 2007]
Pauline Oliveros: The Wanderer [Lovely; 1984; r: Important; 2007]

Houston-born new music composer and performer Oliveros writes expansive, often meditative electronic and acoustic music, was an early member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center (which eventually morphed into Mills College's Center for Contemporary Music) along with Morton Subotnick, Terry Riley and Steve Reich, co-founded the Deep Listening Band with Stuart Dempster and Panaiotis, has written several books, plays accordion in just intonation, and has been at the forefront of textural, highly nuanced experimental music for more than forty years. Her pieces take advantage of her own concept of "deep" or "quantum" listening, wherein performers and audience should immerse themselves in sound to the point of picking up on things (from both the music and the outside world) otherwise imperceptible; indeed, as Oliveros says, "Hearing is involuntary…Listening actively directs one's attention to what is heard, to the interaction of the relationships of sounds and modes of attention."

If that sounds a bit dry, check out the records. Important's reissues of Accordion & Voice (Oliveros' first recording as a soloist) and The Wanderer (featuring ensemble works) are godsends for anyone enamored of staring (sonically) into nothingness, and still managing to see a million things. The 1984 LP features a duet with the late, renoun pianist/composer (and frequent performer of John Cage's pieces) David Tudor, playing bandoneon on "Duo for Accordion & Bandoneon", a piece originally written for the same duo twenty years prior. The piece is often sparse, and the occasionally accented entrances by one of the instruments can seem all the more jarring when your ears become attuned to the quasi-stasis of the music-- it actually reminds me of some onkyo music in this respect, though the accordion and bandoneon offer a little more sonic richness than a sine wave. "The Wanderer" is an uncharacteristically rollicking piece for accordion ensemble; when the percussion enters about eight minutes in with the 9/8 break, it seems closer to Eastern European folk dance than contemporary classical. The performance of "Horse Sings from Cloud" is for an accordion/bandoneon/harmonium/concertina quartet, and is right at home with the sustained-tone ambience of Morton Feldman, Stockhausen's vocal overtone study Stimmung , or even some of György Ligeti's microtonal pieces. Neat!

The performance of the same piece on Accordion & Voice is much different: literally, Oliveros plays accordion and vocalizes long tones "until there is no longer any desire to change it." The piece is one of Oliveros' "sonic meditations", pieces wherein "scores" are communicated orally, and ultimately, anyone can participate-- as long as they're down with deep listening. The performance here certainly requires some pretty intense focus, though its glacial phrases (which were borne from the breath control of both human voice and accordion) give ample opportunity to settle into the sound. "Rattlesnake Mountain" is a solo accordion performance, composed while Oliveros watched wind blow through meadows near the namesake mountain. The modal melody strikes me as both solemn and mystical, somewhere between an Indian raga and a bagpipe funeral hymn. In any case, like all of the music on these CDs, it rewards open ears.