Donate to the TANK
for Colorado Gives DAY
Tuesday, December 5th
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Support a Colorado Treasure for Colorado Gives Day
Your gift to the TANK will support
New concerts–mostly free–in the 2024 season
Continued free access on Open Saturdays
New educational programming at the
Remote recording in the TANK from anywhere
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SLOW BEETHOVEN
NOW AVAILABLE IN VINYL
The Tank is pleased to announce that Slow Beethoven is now available in a vinyl LP on a 12-inch disk in classic black.
With a handsome cover and label by Sonderby Design in San Francisco, the record was mastered by Taylor Deupree and our ace engineering team at the Tank and pressed in Virginia by Blue Sprocket Pressing.
Order your album here, on our Bandcamp page.
On June 17, 2021, at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, renowned cellist Jeffrey Zeigler led three other virtuosic players in an adagio movement, the fugue from Beethoven’s String Quartet Number 14 in C-sharp minor, Opus 131. As they played, they heard the sound of their performance resonating in the profound reverb of The TANK, in which sonic impulses may sustain for up to 40 seconds.
To allow each of the lush, Ludwiggy chords to ring out and fade in The TANK, the quartet had to slow the work radically, so that this short movement, some seven minutes long in the original tempo, took more than 45 minutes for them to play. The result is otherworldly, part Beethoven and part something entirely new.
Meditative, calm, emotional, this music can return you to yourself.
2023 Season in Review
Septemberfest
Zeena Parkins Scott Amendola
Harpist electro-acoustic composer Zeena Parkins and drummer signal-treater Scott Amendola presented a work especially composed for the TANK.
New York based electro-acoustic composer/improviser Zeena Parkins is a pioneer of contemporary harp practices. Through the use of expanded playing techniques, object preparations, and electronic processing she has re-defined the instrument’s capacities. Concurrently, Parkins self-designed a series of one-of-a kind electric instruments. She leans into the harp’s physical limitations pushing into its boundaries and impossibilities. Parkins is a recent recipient of the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Composition.
Drummer signal-treater Scott Amendola is an ambitious composer, savvy bandleader, electronics explorer, first-call accompanist and capaciously creative foil for some of the world’s most inventive musicians. Amendola applies his wide-ranging rhythmic virtuosity to a vast array of settings. His closest musical associates include guitarists Charlie Hunter, Nels Cline, and Jeff Parker, Hammond B-3 organist Wil Blades, violinist Jenny Scheinman, saxophonist Phillip Greenlief, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, bassists Trevor Dunn, and Todd Sickafoose.
Beth Custer
Bay Area music scene giant Beth Custer brought her clarinets, along with her voice, percussion and toys. Beth is a founding member of the notorious silent film soundtrack purveyors the Club Foot Orchestra, the Fourth World ambient ensemble Trance Mission, the trip-hop duo Eighty Mile Beach, and the Latin-jazz-rock influenced Doña Luz 30 Besos. She also leads the quartet of esteemed jazz clarinetists called Clarinet Thing and The Beth Custer Ensemble.
Ben Neill
Composer/performer Ben Neill is the inventor of the Mutantrumpet, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument. He has recorded eleven albums and performed at the BAM Next Wave Festival, Big Ears Festival, Lincoln Center, Whitney Museum of American Art, Bing Concert Hall at Stanford, Getty Museum, Cite de la Musique Paris, Moogfest, Spoleto Festival, Umbria Jazz, Bang On A Can Festival, ICA London, Istanbul Jazz Festival, Vienna Jazz Festival, and the Edinburgh Festival.
Sound Circle
Based in Boulder, Colorado, the women of Sound Circle, an 18-voice a cappella women’s vocal ensemble, have come together to experience the deep joy of making music and to share that joy with audiences. Sound Circle has commissioned many new works, performed original music by members of the ensemble, and created many new arrangements.
Free Concerts and Events in 2023
Ars Nova Singers
Specializing in a cappella music of the Renaissance and the 20th and 21st centuries, the ensemble has presented more than 400 performances and has received national recognition for its innovative programming and collaborations.
Ars Nova Singers has been heard on radio broadcasts throughout the world, including such National Public Radio programs as Performance Today, The First Art, Music from the Hearts of Space, and on Colorado Spotlight and Colorado Matters.
Marilyn Martorano
“Litho” is Greek for stone and “phone” means sound; a lithophone is a musical instrument consisting of a purposely-selected rock (often formally-shaped) that is tapped or rubbed with friction to produce musical notes.
Archaeologist Marilyn Martorano demonstrated and explained these ancient ground stone artifacts from Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve and the San Luis Valley.
Perc Ens
Hailing from the Helicopter Copter studio in Fort Collins, Perc Ens is a minimalism percussion ensemble, inspired by composers like Steve Reich, Julius Eastman, and Terry Riley, performing high intensity yet low volume acoustic compositions, with many iterations of live performance. You might hear marimba, drum set, chromatic pitched instruments, and hand percussion, all composed to showcase the melody, rhythm, and timbre of each instrument and their unions.
John Gunther
John Gunther is a Professor and director of the Thompson Jazz Studies Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. He received his BM at Berklee College of Music, an MM at the University of Miami, and a Ph.D. from New York University. In 2007 he founded the Boulder Laptop Orchestra [BLOrk] to explore the intersection of music, performance, art, and technology.
Andy Clausen
A founding member of genre-bending brass quartet The Westerlies, Andy has performed and recorded with, among others, Fleet Foxes, Nico Muhly, Gabriel Kahane, Caroline Shaw, John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Vieux Farka Touré, Wynton Marsalis, Ron Carter, Benny Golson, Joe Lovano, and The American Brass Quintet. Andy is a graduate of The Juilliard School and has served as principal conductor and Artistic Director for Jazz at New York Youth Symphony since 2016. In 2021 he joined the faculty of The New School as an Artist in Residence and professor of trombone and composition.
The Tank and the West
Bill Frisell and Bill Morrison
On Saturday, August 28, 2021, at 8pm, in the high desert of Colorado, the guitarist and composer Bill Frisell and the filmmaker Bill Morrison charged the Tank’s extraordinary structure with a live sound and image performance. Exploring its history as an embodiment of the American West, Frisell created an original score and Morrison projected film images on the stark landscape and the sides of the seven-story tower.
The event was also filmed for a future documentary. Here are a few pics.
This much-anticipated concert featured digitally-mapped projections by Future Lighting of Los Angeles. Highlighting the town of Rangely, Colorado, this event was supported by major grants from the Neil D. Karbank Foundation, the William H. Donner Family Foundation, and the ArtWorks program of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Coming in 2023
The TANK Center for Sonic Arts will return to a normal schedule for its 2023 season, starting May 1.
Open Saturdays
Free public visiting hours from 9am to 1pm on Saturdays until Oct. 31.
Put Your Head in the Tank
Put Your Head in the Tank is a new program, using binaural head microphones, that allows a listener anywhere to be immersed in the Tank. If you’d like to experience the Tank intimately, in the comfort of your own home, and even record via this program, write us at friendsofthetank@gmail.com.
The Tank Masters Series
The Tank Masters Series, concerts by artists who have proven most skilled at playing the instrument that is the seven-story water tank, present new music here on the Tank’s website, tanksounds.org.
Book the Tank
The Tank’s program of recording sessions returns, as do the regular booking of non-recording visits. For more on reserving the Tank for your session or group, click here.
