Oakland, CA–May 29, 2009. Becoming the first woman to receive the William Schuman Award, Mills College visiting professor of music Pauline Oliveros has received a lifetime achievement honor awarded by the School of the Arts at Columbia University.

Established in 1981, the Schuman Award recognizes "the lifetime achievement of a living American composer whose works have been widely performed and generally acknowledged to be of lasting significance. "The award recipient also receives an unrestricted grant of $50,000, one of the largest given to an American composer. A concert will also be held on March 27, 2010 at Columbia University's Miller Theater to honor her work.

Carol Becker, dean of faculty at the School of the Arts at Columbia University called Oliveros "a truly adventurous artist, who has contributed so much to redefining the boundaries and potentialities of contemporary music."

The award has been given seven times previously, including to William Schuman, David Diamond, Gunther Schuller, Milton Babbitt, Hugo Weisgall, Steve Reich, and most recently in 2006, John Zorn. Reich is a Mills College graduate of the class of 1963 and recently won a Pulitzer Prize in music.

Oliveros first came to Mills College in 1966 as the first director of the Mills Tape Music Center, formerly the San Francisco Tape Music Center and later re-named the Center for Contemporary Music. She left the following year but returned to Mills nearly 20 years later in 1986 as a distinguished visiting composer and again from 1996 to 2007 as the Darius Milhaud Professor of Composition. Since 2007, she has been a visiting professor of composition.

"Pauline is a beloved member of our musical community," said David Bernstein, Mills College professor of music. "She has devoted her creative work and teaching to humanitarian causes, inspired both her colleagues and generations of Mills music students, and has made path-breaking contributions to feminist scholarship in music."

During the 1960s, Oliveros pioneered collaborative mixed-media compositions with electronic sounds, light projections, and theatrical elements, and contributed to the early development of free improvisation and live electronic music. In the 1970s, Oliveros created a form of improvisation called "Sonic Meditations" and with "Deep Listening," she influenced the course of contemporary music by incorporating all environmental sounds into a musical performance.

Oliveros now serves as distinguished research professor of music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

For more information visit the Mills College department of music.

Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California, Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering a dynamic progressive education that fosters leadership, social responsibility, and creativity to approximately 950 undergraduate women and 500 graduate women and men. Since 2000, applications to Mills College have more than doubled. The College is named one of the top colleges in the West by U.S. News & World Report, one of the Best 368 Colleges by the Princeton Review, and ranks 75th among America's best colleges by Forbes.com. Visit us at www.mills.edu.

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