Bowerbird is pleased to present the Arcana New Music Ensemble performing Pauline Oliveros’ works The Well and The Gentle at the Icebox Project Space.

Written between 1982-1983 and commissioned by Philadelphia’s Relâche Ensemble, The Well and The Gentle are two of Oliveros’ text based intuitive pieces. Rooted in listening, the scores consist of written instructions, scales, and a rhythmic motif.

PROGRAM

Oliveros: The Well (1982)

Oliveros: The Gentle (1983)

ARCANA NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE

Nicholas Handahl – flute
Noa Even – tenor saxophone
Melinda Rice – violin
Carlos Santiago – violin
Alyssa Almeida – cello
Anne Ishii – percussion
Andy Thierauf – percussion

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Founded in 2016, the Arcana New Music Ensemble is a group of Philadelphia-based musicians dedicated to presenting interesting, beautiful, and unconventional music in interesting, beautiful, and unconventional places. Built on a flexible roster of 25 musicians, Arcana is able to perform a broad range of repertoire in numerous configurations. Composers featured in recent programs include Julius Eastman, Morton Feldman, Galina Ustvolskaya, Pauline Oliveros, Tom Johnson, Moondog, and James Tenney. Arcana has performed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fleisher Art Memorial, The Rotunda, The Kitchen (NYC), and collaborated with Variant Six, Prometheus Chamber Orchestra, and Pig Iron Theater Company.

Pauline Oliveros’ (1932-2016) life as a composer, performer and humanitarian was about opening her own and others’ sensibilities to the universe and facets of sounds. Her career spanned fifty years of boundary dissolving music making. In the ’50s she was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, artists, poets gathered together in San Francisco. In the 1960’s she influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual.

She was the recipient of four Honorary Doctorates and among her many recent awards were the William Schuman Award for Lifetime Achievement, Columbia University, New York, NY,The Giga-Hertz-Award for Lifetime Achievement in Electronic Music from ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany and The John Cage award from from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts.

Oliveros was Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and Darius Milhaud Artist-in-Residence at Mills College. She founded “Deep Listening®,” which came from her childhood fascination with sounds and from her works in concert music with composition, improvisation and electro-acoustics. She described Deep Listening as a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one’s own thoughts as well as musical sounds.

“Deep Listening is my life practice,” Oliveros explained, simply. Oliveros founded Deep Listening Institute, formerly Pauline Oliveros Foundation, now the Center For Deep Listening at Rensselaer, Troy, NY. Her creative work is currently disseminated through The Pauline Oliveros Trust and the Ministry of Maåt, Inc.