City to honor late 'Deep Listening' founder
Part of the Broadway Commons property in Midtown will be renamed in memory of Pauline Oliveros.
A portion of the Broadway Commons property, the site of the former King’s Inn motel in Midtown, will be renamed in memory of longtime city resident Pauline Oliveros, an internationally celebrated multi-instrumentalist and avant-garde composer.
Oliveros, the founder of the concept of “Deep Listening,” died last Nov. 24 at age 84.
On Tuesday, the Kingston Common Council voted unanimously to rename a portion of the property at 615 Broadway as the “Deep Listening Plaza in Honor of Pauline Oliveros.” A plaque noting the designation will be provided by the Kingston Arts Commission, which made the request to honor Oliveros.
“This is an amazing woman ,and I think what we’re doing here is very, very important,” Alderwoman Nina Dawson, D-Ward 4, said prior to the council’s vote.
Oliveros was a pioneer in electronic music and a leader in contemporary music with a broad range of expertise, including composing, performance and teaching. Some of her music was featured in the local documentary “Lost Rondout.”
In a 2005 interview with the Freeman, Oliveros described deep listening as “a process and practice of expanding inclusive listening and intensifying exclusive listening.”
“Inclusive listening may extend to all wave forms that are possible to perceive in the space/time continuum,” she said. “Exclusive listening is attention or focus to detail. It is possible to listen in both ways simultaneously.”
During the public speaking portion of Tuesday’s meeting, Anne Bailey, of Bailey Pottery Equipment, said Oliveros was instrumental in the city’s Midtown Arts District. She said Oliveros was world renown but managed to attend almost every meeting of the Arts District and help guide it.
“Many of us really recognize the importance of Pauline to Kingston,” Bailey said.
Other speakers, including Linda Marston-Reid, voiced support for the property designation.
“She may have been a world-famous sound artist, but she had a very humble heart,” Marston-Reid said of Oliveros.
Born in Houston, Oliveros studied composition at the University of Houston and later completed her bachelor’s degree at San Francisco State University. After graduation, Oliveros composed “Bye Bye Butterfly,” which was included on The New York Times’ Rockwell List of the 10 most significant musical works of the 1960s.
From 1967 to 1981, Oliveros taught at the University of California-San Diego, a job she left to move to the Hudson Valley. In 1987, she moved to Kingston.
In 1985, Oliveros founded the Pauline Oliveros Foundation, which changed its name to the Deep Listening Institute in 2005.
Formerly based in Kingston’s Rondout district, the institute later moved to the Shirt Factory at 77 Cornell St. in Midtown. In 2015, the institute moved to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, where it now is known as the Center for Deep Listening.