June 8, 1979 - New Music New York day 1: Pauline Oliveros "The Tuning Meditation" at the Kitchen
full entry for what I could find about this work; see the June 8 entry on New Music New York 1979 for the other events from that day
https://georgesdupuis.substack.com/publish/post/121899331
plus all of the you tube links of new versions (and one commentary) about the work - these are at the time of writing the same as the ones which follow, though both are likely to grow!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmyw9E0_Jh8bV3I3zHVTVyoautTcGfJJd
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festival catalogue description in its entirety:
Pauline Oliveros The Tuning Meditation
(Samuel Vanicek – Kitchen archive recording)
A recording of the original performance appears on the Kitchen compilation, appearing in 2004, but I haven’t got a copy of that one. There are apparently 10 copies here for sale with the full details of 19 tracks:
https://www.discogs.com/release/550900-Various-From-The-Kitchen-Archives-New-Music-New-York-1979
From the y2b playlist, this one seems to be the coolest version on first glance:
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Charles Ward, Houston Chronicle 19790724
Pauline Oliveros, a native of Houston now teaching in California, presented The Tuning Meditation, a piece in which the audience became the performer. Members were instructed to select a note, hold it for a while, then tune to a note held nearby. The haze of sound, which emerged only after a truck roared and rumbled by outside, giving audience members a chance to sneak in a tone, was gorgeous.
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Tom Johnson, Village Voice 19790702
… Still, religious instincts make themselves felt in all human societies, and they have had much to do with the evolution of experimental music. Composers, perhaps more often than their contemporaries in any of the other arts, have been quite aware of spiritual values.
Pauline Oliveros is a case in point. On the opening night of the festival, she came on stage and simply offered a few brief instructions to the audience. ‘Sing a tone on one breath, sing someone else’s tone on the next breath, and continue in this way.’ Then she just closed her eyes and waited. It was an act of faith, and an uncooperative audience could easily have ruined the whole thing, and yet, as the gorgeous choral texture began to rise very gradually out of the audience, it began to seem almost impossible that anything could go wrong. There was something irresistable about her, about her belief, and about how she was able to somehow plug herself, and us, into an almost cosmic experience. The result was not really a Buddhist statement, and certainly not a Christian one, and yet it was a devotional act. Something mystical, something superhuman seemed to be controlling that performance, and even those who would rather not think about such things were respectful of the atmosphere that took over the space. As the last voices were dropping out, after perhaps 10 minutes of this unrehearsed chanting, the room fell into an extraordinary peacefulness.
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Tim Page, on remembering the performance via the release of the Kitchen CD - Washington Post 20040509:
Oliveros’ Tuning meditation, performed by the Kitchen audience, is so sweetly seraphic that it makes a listener want to join in.
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---- Quinn, American Record Guide, April 2005, reviewing the recording:
…and easily identifiable pieces by Meredith Monk (Do You Be) and Pauline Oliveros (The Tuning Meditation). Oliveros’s piece is meant for the audience to perform – she asks people to hum, and to sing any note they like and to match the pitch of someone they hear. After some laughter from the audience (Oliveros says she’s going to do her best to disappear), they launch into it with gusto, creating a sound that is touching and lushly beautiful, however cheesy the ideas seems a quarter-century later.
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Beth Anderson “Report from the Front”
Guerrilla criticism of New Music New York (26 pages), June 1979:
Sing only long tones. Contribute one of your own and then tune to someone else’s.” Ms. Oliveros disappeared and waves of pitches appeared. Power tripping by the audience. Everyone wants everyone else to sing their pitch. It sounds like an Orff-sound-alike-at-the-movies, just before the wife goes insane. It really is gorgeous.
She wears red == looks red == has amulet and Indian overlay == looks comfortable without shoes. She is pulling the sound out of us and we get off. It’s like the Episcopal church where everyone sings almost everything == participation == but better, sicne its (sic) not possible to be out of tune. For this one, there is great admiration.
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From the same report by Beth Anderson:
Joseph D. McLellan interview (by the editor – he’s from the Washington Post…)
Q: What do you think of the music?
A: Tom Johnson’s ‘pokalockadukala’ piece sounds like the opening scene in The Music Man. Scott Johnson’s crying track was the most interesting part of his piece.
Q: What composers do you like?
A: J.S. Bach, Varese, Berio, the Rolling Stones before Let it Bleed, John Fahey and on this series the music I’ll remember the most is the Oliveros piece. And Ashley’s Wolfman.
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John Rockwell, NYT review on June 10:
Of the four [Oliveros, Reich, Monk and Glass], the best effect was made by Miss Oliveros, who did an audience-participation piece that was lucidly simple in its instructions and lovely to hear and to participate in.
People were asked to sing long notes on a pitch of choice, and to alternate between that pitch and the matching of their voices to somebody else’s pitch. The result was a shifting, dappled choral texture of sound, and the very timidity of many of the audience helped lend it a magically distant and ethereal quality.
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Presented by MUSIC on the REBOUND, Hosted by International Contemporary Ensemble Led by IONE, Claire Chase, and Raquel Acevedo Klein in 2020:
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IONE leads the World Wide Tuning Meditation in 2019 at the Classical:NEXT festival in Brooklyn:
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Presented by So Percussion, July 25, 2020 during the SōSI 2020 Day of Awesomeness (sic)
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World Wide Tuning Meditation with the Mills College Choir, the Cornelius Cardew Choir, and Voci leading the audience at Mills College 1/22/17
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what have they been putting in louisiana’s water?
oh, right.
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The Cornelius Cardew Choir performs Tuning Meditation by Pauline Oliveros for Music for the Afterlife at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 5/7/17
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Someone who goes by the name of Musica Entera decided to create a solo version during COVID…