The Tank returns to a normal schedule

RBC | The Tank Center for Sonic Arts is returning to a normal schedule of concerts and visits for its 2021 season, starting May 1. Festivities and regular programs include the fifth annual Solstice Festival, June 19 and 20; The Tank and the West, a film and music event with Grammy-winning guitarist Bill Frisell and filmmaker Bill Morrison, August 28; the resumption of off-site concerts around Rangely by visiting artists; and free Open Saturday hours, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Last year, while the Tank’s activities were disrupted by the pandemic, the organization put an emphasis on bringing the sonic experience of the Tank to audiences online, and this focus will continue in 2021. Put Your Head in the Tank is a new program, using binaural head microphones and a 360-degree video camera, that allows a listener anywhere to be immersed in the Tank via a Facebook link. The Tank Masters Series, concerts by artists who have proven most skilled at playing the instrument that is the seven-story water tank, will present new music via the Tank’s website, tanksounds.org. And new installments of the sonic meditation program called Tank Mind, designed to calm and ease the listener, will again be broadcast, also via the web.

2021 Solstice Festival: Todd Barton and Slow Beethoven

• Saturday, June 19, 8 p.m.: Live concert with electronic music legend Todd Barton, a composer, sound designer, multimedia performer, and analog synthesist specializing in Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments, the iconic synthesizers that defined experimental music in the early ‘70s. He is also Resident Composer Emeritus for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Barton’s concert will occur in conjunction with the Tank’s regular festivities around the longest day of the year, including a dawn celebration, bell ringing and other events.
• Sunday, June 20, all day: The Festival will conclude with Slow Beethoven, a walk-through presentation of a slowed down and electronically-stretched movement from a late Beethoven string quartet. Slowing it down will allow each of those lush, Ludwiggy chords to ring out and fade in the Tank, where sounds may sustain for up to 40 seconds. Played by Jeffrey Zeigler, Lara St. John and two other players at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, New York, then sent to the Tank by remote signal, this concert will be a prominent experiment in a year of Beethoven festivities for the famous composer’s 250th birthday. Seating will be outdoors only for all Solstice events. Tickets for the Festival are on sale at tanksounds.org.

The Tank and the West

On Aug. 28 at 8 p.m. the Tank will present its much-anticipated and delayed event with guitarist/composer Bill Frisell and filmmaker Bill Morrison, with digitally-mapped projections on the Tank and the landscape illuminated by Future Lighting of Los Angeles.  The event will celebrate the town of Rangely and the region and depict the Tank itself as an emblem of the American West. Tickets for this event, too, are on sale at tanksounds.org.
The Tank’s program of recording sessions will also return, as will the regular booking of non-recording visits. For more, see tanksounds.org.