In the 1950s she was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, artists, poets gathered together in San Francisco. Oliveros has been as interested in finding new sounds as in finding new uses for old ones - her primary instrument is the accordion, an unexpected visitor perhaps to musical cutting edge, but one which she approaches in much the same way that a Zen musician might approach the Japanese shakuhachi. Pauline Oliveros' life as a composer, performer and humanitarian is about opening her own and others' sensibilities to the universe and facets of sounds. Since the 1960s she has influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual. Pauline Oliveros is the founder of “Deep Listening”, a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing.