The TankJoin us in Rangely for the TANK’s biggest Solstice Festival yet. Click here to book your stay. 8pm Friday June 23 Ben Neill Composer/performer Ben Neill is the inventor of the Mutantrumpet, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument. Ben’s music blends influences from electronic, jazz, and minimalist music, blurring the lines between digital media and acoustic instrument performance. He […]
Todd BartonSolstice Performance On June 19, 2021, Todd Barton headlined the Solstice Festival at the TANK Center for Sonic Arts, in Rangely, Colorado. Known as one of the pioneers of the synthesizer on the West Coast, Todd also played recorder and shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) for his performance in The TANK. Here’s Todd, playing the […]
William WinantSilver Streetcar for Orchestraby Alvin Lucier A triangle solo? Yes, but wait . . . At Solstice, 2019, the percussionist William Winant came to the Tank to perform a solo concert and proved masterful at playing the whole structure as one big drum. Among the pieces he brought was this one, by composer Alvin […]
Sherry FinzerThe Making of Renewal One of the few musicians who got out to the TANK in the pandemic year of 2020, Sherry Finzer made an epic car trip north from her home in Arizona to record a new album, Renewal. Sherry is a master at the flute and at playing the grand instrument of […]
A short film byStar Rosencransand Joshua Hill Music by Bill FrisellRecorded in the TANK on April 28, 2019 For the Winter Solstice, this song of hopeplayed by Bill Frisellin a film of momentsfrom Rangely, Colorado. Wishing you the peace and joy of the season. At his 2019 residency at the TANK, guitarist and composer Bill […]
Michael HarrisonJust Constellations Performed byRoomful of Teeth In 2017, the astonishing, GRAMMY-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth came to the TANK. Among the compositions they performed and recorded was this one, Michael Harrison’s Just Constellations. After Bach, musicians adopted the compromise tuning system of equal temperament, in which all intervals are mildly dissonant, but compatible […]
Joseph Tompkins4Round Marc Damoulakis, PercussionJeremy Epp, PercussionJoseph Tompkins, PercussionKevin Watkins, Percussion Recorded by Jamey LamarCommissioned by Strings Music Festival In 2018, four percussionists came to the Tank to perform this masterful work “4Round,” which was created specifically for the Tank and deeply explores the reverberations of its unique space. One challenge that Joseph Tompkins faced in […]
Ida ToninatoWe Become Giants Montréal-based saxophonist, composer and improviser Ida Toninato has an ear for the unknown and a history of exploring reverberant spaces. She came to the Tank in September, 2018, to make this album, We Become Giants, which was beautifully post-produced at Studio Makina in Montréal by sound artist Blaise Borboën-Léonard. For the title […]
Scot RayVessel Slide guitarist Scot Ray is a genre bending improviser and composer. Previously a trombonist with the Brian Setzer Orchestra, Jason Mraz, Nels Cline, Vinny Golia, and Francisco Aguabella, Scot here applies his lifelong fascination with portamento and the non-fixed pitch to lap steel guitar. Scot recorded Vessel at the Tank in the last […]
Singing RiverO+ABruce Odland & Sam Auinger Single-stringed river harps, played by the flowing water of the Rhine River, produced these serene melodies, which were recorded and then played back into the Tank’s deep resonance to make harmonious tracks, full of peace, wellness, and the power of nature. Think of them as Gregorian chant, sung by […]
Jolle Greenleaf & Hank Heijink TENET Vocal Artists Soprano Jolle Greenleaf and Lutenist Hank Heijink performed in The TANK on September 7, 2019. In a concert entitled Echoes of the Ages, this dynamic duo explored themes and variations for lute and voice, playing music from the Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Reverberation has always inspired awe in human beings, and […]
LISTEN NOW If you‘ve been wondering what’s happening at the Tank in this time of global pandemic, wonder no more. The Tank is fine, sitting on its hill above Rangely, Colorado, reverberating even at this moment with the desert wind and rain. Not much can happen to a seven-story Corten steel water tank. It was there […]
R. Carlos Nakai& Will Clipman R. Carlos Nakai and Will Clipman performed these songs in the Tank on September 8, 2018. Nakai is the master of the Native American flute and Clipman is a much-honored percussionist. They proved acutely sensitive to the deep resonance of the Tank, as their evocation of the Native American spirit […]
Our 2019 Season started in April with the Karbank Residency, a four-day gathering that truly showed us the future of the Tank. Guitarist/composer Bill Frisell and filmmaker Bill Morrison came to Rangley for this open-ended residency and decided to create music and images to tell the history of the Tank as a way of […]
In May, the Colorado Children’s Chorale came to The TANK and made this lovely video of their visit. Solstice Festival, June 21, 22, 23 Our Solstice Festival culminated with a concert by the great jazz trumpeter, Ron Miles. In July, Temple Grandin visited The TANK, to advise us on programming for children on the autism […]
Click here to read the article (PDF download)
I am so excited about your tank project, even though I might never be able to visit The TANK in real life. It is now about eleven years ago that in a magic moment, a group of 9 acoustically experimentalist like-minded people met by coincidence at the same party in the unprobable city of Bielefeld in […]
What is The TANK? To the welders who built it and the railroad men who set it in place, it was just a cylinder of steel. To several generations of Rangely high school kids, it was a secret club, a place to do those things kids do behind their parents’ backs. To the musicians who […]
The Epitaph of Seikilos and its Reverberance in The TANK. Estimated as probably being created in the first century, C.E., the Epitaph of Seikilos is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) complete pieces of notated music ever discovered. Etched on a cylindrical tombstone found in southern Turkey, it is a monophonic melody set with […]
Here you are! The Flinching Eye Collective, a group of media based performance artists, had the privilege to visit The TANK last year. We were on a mission to both support the development of this burgeoning new art center, as well as attempt to engage with it as an acoustic collaborator. What we discovered was a […]
Here’s a slideshow of all the work that’s taken place between our 2013 Kickstarter and the end of 2015.
The TANK is now Legal as a Public Space. Thank you for your generous support and endless encouragement. After three years of hard work, The TANK Center for Sonic Arts in Rangely, Colorado has a Certificate of Occupancy. We transformed an abandoned water tank that no one could enter legally, into a permitted assembly hall, […]
It’s been just a little over two years since we decided to SAVE THE TANK.So what’s happened in that time? JUST THE HEADLINES (For busy folk.) FRIENDS OF THE TANK is now a 501c3 not for profit with the IRS. WE HAVE OUR BUILDING PERMIT AND HAVE STARTED TO BUILD! Now for the real story. Lets […]
Big news we are very happy to announce! Friends of The TANK has been awarded Federal 501(c)(3) non-profit status by the IRS. This means any contributions after July 31, 2014 are tax deductible! Our non-profit application team worked really hard on this for weeks – gathering loads of information and filing paperwork. It came through much more quickly […]
What a whirlwind in slow motion…. 13 months after the end of our Kickstarter campaign, The TANK has been approved for what is called a Conditional Use Permit. Without this important but unforeseen step, we would not be allowed to have anyone in the tank in the future! We never would have guessed that our […]
The history of the TANK is populated by many unique experiences, experiments, and educations, which until recently had existed almost exclusively under the radar. While I have only had one occasion to visit the tank, the access I was granted on my visit made it obvious to me exactly how important and influential this space […]
With credentials too massive to list, 2-time Grammy winner Tom Wassinger came to the TANK for the first time to record. His gorgeous Weissenborn-style Hawaiian lap-steel guitar created a stunning example of what we knew would happen when such big talent is set free in this echoic chamber. The Ladies: A gathering of six local ladies and […]
We are in the midst of taking our dream public – turning the TANK, an accidental sonic wonder, into a Center for Sonic Arts. We want you to be part of it. There will be a public meeting with the Rio Blanco County Planning Commission Thursday, April 10, 2014 at 7:00 PM in the County Annex […]
First Encounter During my first Tank trip in the early 1980’s with Bruce Odland, Elton Norwood, and Brian Waters, my previous relationship to the practice of music was fundamentally obliterated. The Tank’s powerful and responsive, reverberant voice quickly made it clear that making sounds in there was not going to be about me, my ego, […]