School of the Arts Awards Pauline Oliveros Schuman Music Award
On March 27 the composer Pauline Oliveros will be the first woman to receive the William Schuman Award. The award, which is granted periodically by the School of the Arts , recognizes the lifetime achievement and career of a living composer and carries with it a prize of $50,000. Previous winners of the Schuman award have included John Zorn, Steve Reich and Milton Babbitt. Pauline Oliveros has been a pioneer of avant-garde American music since her involvement with the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the early 1960s. The aim of the center was to host concerts and encourage experimentation in recording music on tape. When the Tape Center became part of Mills College in 1966, Oliveros was its first director. From the Tape Music Center, Oliveros went on to write books on music theory and to explore the concepts of listening and sound through the formation of her theory of deep listening and her Deep Listening Band, which hosts retreats and concerts and studies sonic effects by recording in locations such as caves and underground cisterns.
