LIstening and Sounding Gatherings/ Deep Listening Intensives

symbio from Greek symbíōsis ‘living together, companionship’; from symbiō-, variant stem of symbioûn ‘to live with, live together’; (from sym- + bioûn; ‘to live, pass one’s life’; derivative of bíos ‘life’

Continuing the theme of presence in a quantum experience of attention in space and time, consider listening as full sensory perception, as care, as a map for social and environmental evolution, as self-organizing sonic beauty. An experiential gathering to focus on well being and inclusivity in relation to listening attention: to our environment and the more-than-human sound field, in a memory archive and creative imaginative world making sense. We sound the Tuning Meditation, or Heart of Tones with a focus on the sensory quality of microtonal difference tones, and the agency of attention. New ways of attunement to the environment, ourselves and each other may emerge. 

previous intensives : ISATMA, NY; ARRAYMusic; VENUSfest Listening in the Dark; Sounding Difference Music Gallery; Killowatt Serre dei Giardini Margherita, Bologna IT; MMM_MM/ Ensemble Vide, Theatre Galpon, Geneva, CH

Creative process and Environmental Attunement Consultant 2024

Contact annebourne.field@gmail.com

Sharing experience in conversation and site visits.

However, energy and vibration, perhaps because they come to stand as master signifiers of the non conceptual, are easily reified and any discussion of them is constantly at risk of getting lost in a fog of New Age obscuration, and so on. On the other hand, the disavowal of energy and philosophy often uses this risk of obscurantism as a justification for subjecting or “negating” them as concerns entirely. Thus the body, corporeality, disappears and the realm of concepts is itself safeguarded but also reified.
Energies in Arts Marcus Boon, MIT Press, 2019

Pauline Oliveros 1932-2016 DEEP LISTENING 

Deep Listening in this context refers to the listening practice of composer Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016.) Oliveros' own intention of 'listening to everything it is possible to listen to all the time,' a listening attention embodied through the shared experience of collective listening and sounding her text scores, Sonic Meditations and Deep Listening pieces.

It was James Tenney who invited me to perform a telematic concert with Pauline Oliveros in 1994 and afterwards Lauren Pratt sent word to Pauline for me, and in response Pauline Invited me to New Mexico the following summer to join her at Rose Mountain Retreat Center in the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, northwest of Las Vegas New Mexico. I became deeply attached to the land and in between retreats explored to learn what I could of the topography , the land the history and the living cultural mix. After several years of travelling up the mountain to listen with Pauline, we began to perform together— at Plan B in New Mexico; in Kingston NY at the Deep Listening Space; at Lincoln Centre Damrosch Park Outdoors Festival in the LUNAR Opera. I was among the first six who Oliveros gave a Deep Listening Certificate to in 1998. (My daughter Willa received a participant certificate as an infant and chewed it as a teething soother ) It seemed to come out of my returning each year and staying for both weeks. I felt I had accomplished something and I wanted to share the feeling I had, that meant more to me as connection than anything I had experienced in the music industry.

Early spring in 1998 I was invited to perform with Pauline, Tony Conrad, David Grubbs and Andrew Deutsch at Hallwall’s in Buffalo NY, the premier of her new mandala composition Primordial/ Lift, which had as a sonic element the resonant frequency of the earth, and was developed with listening techniques we had explored on retreat. The same year Deep Listening Institute/ Meet the Composer, commissioned me to compose a Deep Listening piece for the concert series IONE was curating at Deep Listening Space. With my daughter in utero during the process I titled the piece Dreaming in the Womb. The premier was just before the December my daughter was born. We performed the premier in the Deep Listening Space on the Rondout in Kingston NY with Monique Buzzarté, Stephen Vitiello and Pauline.

I have been imparting Oliveros’ materials and listening practice, sounding the text scores of Pauline Oliveros, since this warm and verdant time. I truly believe in the collective creativity and equanimity of her compositional forms, and the sense of deep time and beauty improvising with Pauline brought to my sensory attention and gave context to , to further refine empathy and perception, in space and time, to be in relation to place, beings and self, through attention and the presence this evokes.

Sounding Difference the text scores of Pauline Oliveros, drew from my experience performing Oliveros’ scores and facilitating Pauline’s text scores. It was through the invitation of AD David Dacks in 2016, having completed my term on the Board of Directors, to be an artist on the Advisory Committee, David Dacks asked us for proposals. I felt the importance to give access , to expand to embrace all those who needed safe space. To experience coalescence in a creative collective, inclusive of all gender, cultural, racial, abilities and neural diversity. At the same moment David secured a beautiful sonorous space, what had been a contemporary Buddhist Temple. I became an artist in residence at the Music Gallery.TO at 918, 2016-2019.

With David Dacks support I founded the Sounding Difference series. I continue this work at Music Gallery at the invitation of new AD Sanjeet. And in other spaces: Banff Centre for Art and Creativity, Collective Composition Lab for Music and Dance; Ontario College of Art and Design University, OCADU; Emily Carr University of Art and Design University, Vancouver; Toronto Biennial of Art; MOCA Toronto; Spoken Web; Acts of Listening Lab, Concordia, Montreal; in the wild gardens of Killowatt: Serre dei Giardini Margherita, Bologna IT, in residence with IONE and Felicia Atkinson for MMM_MM Ensemble Vide Theatre Galpon, Geneva, CH; on the shoreline at Artscape Gibraltar Point and Ward’s Island; ARRAY SPACE on Walnut St, VENUS FEST, and for many artists as mentor in open space, choreographer Kim de Jong Montreal,, Rachel Crummey and Tara Dougan, and the Sisters of the Celestial order of Nephology.

Primordial/ Lift was my meeting place with Pauline. I performed all subsequent performances and recordings of it, including the 2017 posthumous performances at ONE Archive UCLA Los Angeles and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK) with International Contemporary ensemble, Distraktfold, and Ione. I feel the sonics of this piece so essential for life giving, is embodied knowledge essential to my own sound world making. Primordial/Lift with International Contemporary Ensemble and Ione, at One Archive UCLA 2017 was breathtaking. An honour to perform beside Rebekah Heller and Ryan Muncy. I transmitted the imagined analogue sub modulation origin of the piece to composer Mauricio Pauly who performed Pauline’s Oscillator brilliantly at Huddersfield, one year after Pauline’s passing, it was an experience of a sonic absence. only now I have been listening avidly to recordings of pauline’s reed accordion era and discovering my equilibrium.

The Certificate Program, established as an online portal by Oliveros for her legacy, with Ione and Heloise Gold, continues from the Center for Deep Listening, under the Direction of Stephanie Loveless, at Rensselaer, NY. Center for Deep Listening

Artist Mentor

Creative process conversation, and individual creative expression practice.

Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening Certificate Intensive program at the Center for Deep Listening, Rensselaer NY

— Veronique Serret , contemporary classical / improviser violinist/ vocalist composer, first solo composed record, Australia, 2021-2024

— Sisters of the celestial order of nephrology, artists Nina Vroeman and Erin Hill : Horizon Factory deep cloud gazing, Artscape residency, 2022; DEEP GAZING publication, 2024

— Sympoiesis// fruiting bodies Rachel Crummey and Tara Dougans : Environmental Listening Intensive : listening for mycellium, and Artscape residency, 2023

— Henry McPherson, PhD Participant at Collective Composition Lab Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity; successful PhD candidacy Huddersfield University on Improvisation, environmental attunement and listening with the body

— Ganavya ( SAULT ) 2017-2019 Banff Centre for Art and Creativity, Contemporary Music Residency, Dir. Claire Chase, Collective Composition Lab

Archive of Events 2024:

MARCH 7 2024 Toronto

Co-presented by Venus Fest/ Paradise Theatre

6:30pm The Tuning Meditation with Anne Bourne

7pm Documentary Film Screening

DEEP LISTENING: the Story of Pauline Oliveros

9pm Q&A Executive Producer IONE Director Daniel Weintraub

MARCH 10 OTtawa

VenusFest/ PiqueFestival Ottawa

14:00-16:00 Listening and Sounding in the Dark with Anne Bourne

17:00 Documentary Film Screening

DEEP LISTENING: the Story of Pauline Oliveros

19:00 remote Q&A Executive Producer IONE Director Daniel Weintraub

MARCH 14 2024 Vancouver

Presented by Simon Fraser University School of Contemporary Art

Bourne will also lead a listening intensive for School of Contemporary Art, Music & Sound students in CA 246, 346, 446: Creative Studio

7pm Evening Documentary Film Screening FREE
DJAVAD MOWAFAGHIAN CINEMA
SFU GOLDCORP CENTRE FOR THE ARTS
149 W. HASTINGS ST.

DEEP LISTENING: the Story of Pauline Oliveros

Q&A Director Daniel Weintraub Exec Producer Anne Bourne

MARCH 16 2024 Kelowna

The FEELedLab

University of British Columbia Kelowna Campus

3-6pm Listening and Sounding in the Dark

Visiting Artist Anne Bourne

Anne explores themes of equanimity, translation, microtonal sound, listening, walking the littoral, within a more than human sound field, as embodied sonic archiving, and composing in attunement to the wave patterns of water. 

followed by Private Documentary Film Screening DEEP LISTENING: the Story of Pauline Oliveros

APRIL 20th ANNE BOURNE Special solo performance, followed by Sandro Perri and Masahiro Takahashi The Tranzac MAIN HALL

MAY 5 2024 ArtsEverywhere Festival Guelph

presented by Musagetes/ IICSI

8am Morning Listening Walk

The listening walk offers a contemplative experience of a land acknowledgement, and listening within the more than human soundfield. The experience of a deeply listening body (Heloise Gold) is evocative of sonic memory, body as archive, attention to gravity, the celestial, and care.

Visiting Artist Anne Bourne

10Am Sound Healing Panel Discussion

Anjeline de Dios, (Philippines) and Anne Bourne

4pm Documentary Film Screening DEEP LISTENING: the Story of Pauline Oliveros

Listening and sounding in the dark

for all voices

symbiosis borrowed from Greek symbíōsis; living together, companionship; from symbiō-, variant stem of symbioûn ‘to live with, live together’; (from sym- sym- + bioûn ‘;to live, pass one’s life’; derivative of bíos ‘life’

sound arrives

to illuminate the stillness

sonify the dark

listen into the ground, contemplate proximity and distance

beyond noise, know discernment, radiance and care

Tonglen (Tibetan: གཏོང་ལེན) for ‘giving and taking’; (or sending and receiving) inhale darkness exhale light

the event will draw minimal electricity to offer a shared experience of perception in darkness 

generate safe space through expanded sensory perception, discernment and attention 

an opportunity to accumulate choral sound fields in community as experiential peace activism 

Listening walks

The listening walk offers a contemplative experience of a land acknowledgement, and listening within the more than human soundfield. The experience of a deeply listening body (Heloise Gold) is evocative of sonic memory, body as archive, attention to gravity, the celestial, and care. For gatherings of groups or custom for individual, in person or over distance.

Anne Bourne artist/ composer/ cellist/ mentor. With a sound field listening practice, Anne leads collective creativity, in a model of equanimity, for voices to improvise together. An electroacoustic composer, Anne captures emergent streams of cello sonics, voice, and field recordings, for spatial installation, in collaboration with those who stand for the wild and all life forms. Seasoned in International concert touring and recording, Anne improvised significantly with composer Pauline Oliveros, developing a deep listening practice in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. and then developing her distinct listening walks on the shores of Lake Ontario and Sounding Difference collective creative experience, at the Music Gallery in Toronto. Chalmers Fellow, Anne observes shorelines as difference in coalescence, walking. Anne composes in attunement to the spectral wave patterns of ocean.

When you listen particles decide to be heard

Pauline Oliveros

QUantum listening at Array space 2024 dates tbd by request

the sonic meditations and deep listening Text scores of Pauline Oliveros

A monthly experiential listening practice focussed on improvisation environmental attunement, listening and sounding the text scores, and reading the text Quantum Listening by Pauline Oliveros: Sonic Meditations, The Tuning Meditation, Environmental Dialogue. With Oliveros’ practice new ways of attunement to the environment, ourselves and each other may emerge. Holding safe space for collective creative research and environmental gesture.

at Array Space 155 Walnut Av (Queen St W/ Strachan) Toronto

Inquire below: please include full name and describe experience or interest and whether you would like to join the mailing list.

This is an experiential listening practice to enhance your own. All levels of experience in voice and creative expression welcome.

 *ACCESS Please contact in advance for specific access accommodations and I will try to assist.
We welcome and HSP, dDeaf participants and other distinctions of ability, neurodiverse participants requiring attendants received with advance communication preferred. Fluidity of gender, diversity of racial or cultural identity, language, or age are welcomed into a collective creative experience.
Please notify us if ASL or translation requested or other accommodations and we will try.
** PROTOCOLS for HEALTH and SAFETY: If you have any symptoms, please do not attend, come next time.
Masks optional by consensus; social distance and fresh air context possible, or strong air filters. 
Architectural access: ramp and elevator at ARRAY

BIOGRAPHY esoteric

Anne Bourne, a composer/ artist mentor seasoned in international intermedia creation, performance and recording; improvises emergent streams of sonics, and composes durational electroacoustic multichannel environmental sound fields, in collaboration with scholars scientists and visual artists. Anne offers gatherings for collective creativity drawing from the sonic meditations, text scores and deep listening practice of Pauline Oliveros, influenced by a life outdoors, and her own inherited experience of Taoism. Anne’s great grandmother’s father John Chalmers, wrote the first english translation of Lao Tzu, Tao te Qing, in 1868.

Parallel to South Indian, improvisation and contemporary music education, and at the beginning of her concert touring career with Jane Siberry, the moment of her mother’s early death in 1989, Anne began an energy healing practice with renowned clairvoyant Rosalyn L. Bruyere, who collaborated for seven years with Dr. Valerie Hunt, UCLA, on a project to find scientific documentation of human energy fields. Subsequently Anne was commissioned to compose for a film while undergoing a purification process, on an ashram who’s patron was Clementine Nahm Carsen, where Anne was first initiated into a Hindu scripture, yoga postures and meditation practice. Pauline Oliveros, initiated by the previous Karmapa at KTD in upstate NY, introduced Anne to Tibetan Buddhist practice and thought. Anne took refuge at Necheung Dorje Drayang Ling in Hawaii where she experienced a profound sonic illumination that preceded the birth of her daughter.

Concurrent to her sonic art and composition practice, Anne continued to develop a listening practice, as expanded sensory perception, lucid dreaming, Taoist thought, Qi Gong, with tenets of Tibetan Buddhism, and environmental attunement in an empathic atmosphere mentored by Pauline Oliveros, Heloise Gold and IONE, in the sangre de cristo mountain range, beginning 1994.

Anne has gratitude for affirmation and courage from early teachers Lotte Cardinal, who gifted her her own original Urtext editions of Chopin, Beethoven and introduced her to her first piano concerto , the Bach A major, for which she won her first competition at the age of 11. Jaromey Anderson who taught her independence and focus and many sonatas. Influence and belief from her cousin Christopher Butterfield, Rick Sacks Linda Smith, James Tenney , Michael Snow, Trichy Sankaran, during university at York. Recording and performing contexts from songwriter/ producers Jane Siberry, Loreena McKennit, and choreographer/ dancer Andrea Nann. Courage and laughter to experiment big from Pete Bourne, Tom Anselmi Christian Thorvaldson, Fred Frith, John Oswald, Eve Egoyan, Carla Kihlstedt, Ganavya, Susie Ibarra, Mauricio Pauly, Silvia Tarrozzi, David Hykes, Kara Lis Coverdale, Jol Thoms, Patty Chang and Astrida Neimanis.

A facilitator at the Center for Deep Listening, NY. Chalmers Fellow; ongoing participant in TBA21 Academy/ OceanSpace, Venice. Trustee for MoM and the Pauline Oliveros Trust; Recent sonic work: adjacent to sculptural installation Confluence, by Striped Canary, a multichannel audio installation titled soundfield: nearshore, in resonance with buried tributaries; commissioned for an expression of care for the ocean, broadcast underwater by radio amnion; and Learning Endings, a listening walk at the Pacific site of a juvenile humpback whale stranding, Lincoln Park, West Seattle; and an Installation , electroacoustic composition with live performers at the Neuberger Museum, Westchester NY. A 2023 release of Christopher Willes’ production of Oliveros’ To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in recognition of their Desperation, cello performed within an ensemble of musicians and non musicians, released by Art Metropole and Seance Centre. Contributed particle sound drawings and a foreword for the new edition of Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations .

Anne explores themes of equanimity, translation, microtonal sound, listening, walking the littoral, within a more than human sound field, as embodied sonic archiving, and composing in attunement to the wave patterns of water. 

listening walk:

environmental attunement

local in Toronto — Urban resilience, High Park forest or pond, on the shore of Toronto Island at Gibraltar Point or Wards Island

To propose a series of walks, register or for information contact Anne directly at annebourne.field [at] gmail [dot] com

Gibraltar Point Shoreline

Hanlan’s Point or Centre Island Ferry

purchase ferry tickets online

register directly at annebourne.field [at] gmail [dot] com

Wards Island

purchase ferry tickets online

register directly at annebourne.field [at] gmail [dot] com

Propose Series of 3 Environmental attunement walks To set a Schedule

‘Being with you, singing, listening I find a part of myself that I am trying to live into, a part left behind that wants to re-emerge, that takes a bit of courage to believe in. I remember you using the word devotional as you encouraged a way of being in connection energetically with the earth/Earth. It resonates with my heart and my deep love of the Earth.’

remote sounding walk, Jo Corcoran, Burlington VT, 2021

One to One

private mentor sessions

contact me to discuss needs and possibilities HERE please give full name, experience and interest with inquiry

‘It was such a gift to have those amazing creative months , our chats and discovering my own creative process… a window that opened..’

first solo record, violinist/ composer/ songwriter Véronique Serret Sydney, Australia, 2021

Creative practice mentorship sessions:

• facilitation of composition, songwriting, studio recording, field recording process

• improvisation: concept and technique

• voice: sonic anatomy resonance for well-being

• strings: microtonal sonics

• songwriting: place and poetry

• dream: composing from dream

Creative life Conversation

• creative/ life discussion for well being, online private meeting

• custom Private Deep Listening® meditation instruction online

• in person outdoor distance listening walks

Words From participants

Anne Bourne has a gift to make simple gestures of listening and contribution profound. Meeting Anne in Banff Centre’s Collective Composition Lab for Music and Dance (2017), I was invited to be present, listen to my feelings, hear the room, and feel a voice emerge from within me to join others'. I was immediately drawn to Anne’s work and pedagogical approach, which has made clear imprints on my own practices as a dancer and dance teacher. I’m realizing more and more that being conscious of simple invitations: to feel, hear, listen, and merge are what moves me as an artist and guides how I educate others. 

Zachary Cardwell, Contemporary and Improvisation dance teacher, Canada’s National Ballet School, 2023

So helpful to reculated. I definitely have some wonderings about how certain things could be EQ’d differently or placed in a bigger room artificially, and you have a way more advanced sensitivity and vocabulary to this realm than I, so I really appreciate you sharing your opinions so I know which words to use about what I am thinking. cellist, composer improviser

India Gailey, CNMN Connexions Halifax NS 2020

I hold dear the time spent with you as a participant in your sounding sessions. You welcomed and honoured novices such as myself with the same reverence and respect as one would bestow upon a professional skilled musician/vocalist, creating an equanimous, no judgement, container for our voices. Deep listening is of great value and so is being heard. You hold both so well.

Onli Doffing (Sonar Mara, my first deep listening circle was at the request of Onli Doffing, Toronto, 1998)

Collective creative sounding Group CALL

I am interested in forming a group for a series of monthly meetings. Interested in sounding Oliveros’ remarkable Tuning Meditation over a duration of time.

And if you already have a group of friends who would like to explore the Oliveros’ text scores I am interested in creating and mentoring a standing group

And as well interested in creating a group to record. This will include bowed string players as well as voice.

LISTENING WALKs :. Shoreline listening and Sounding Curriculum :.

Deep Listening® ( see Pauline Oliveros below ) out door and indoor safety protocols observed

—extreme slow walk listening meditation

—breath attention to the microtonal sound world

—humming the body

—inside and outside listening attention to the sound field

—Environmental Dialogue (Oliveros)

All safety protocols are evolving : care and respect, masks and social distancing may be required on the ferry and by consensus with what each collective is most comfortable with

Past Workshops:

For Pauline

There were a remarkable number of tributes and memorial events after Oliveros’ departure in 2016. This spoke to the radiant love and deep relationships Pauline had engaged in all over the world and beyond, through her presence of listening and her compassion. At the Park Avenue Armory Memorial, in January 2017, curated by Ione with Claire Chase and Ross Karre of ICE, I lead Pauline's Tuning Meditation. The sound of the Tuning Meditation in the architecture of the Armory, with the tone of the day, of love and honouring, is a sound I will never forget. This is the point of departure for my ongoing practice with Pauline’s Text Scores, of igniting the sound of the Tuning Meditation again and again in many places in the world. I dedicate this work to the memory of Pauline.