Photo: Bruce Odland | From The Tank Center for Sonic Arts: Bruce Odland, composer and sound artist of international standing and founder of the Tank Center for Sonic Arts in Rangely, Colorado, died at his home in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, on September 17. He was 74 years old.
Born in Milwaukee and raised in Janesville, Wisconsin, Bruce graduated from Northwestern University in 1974 in composition and conducting. In addition to his classical training, he explored the music he heard in rivers, machinery, and city streets.
In 1976, Bruce was a 24 year-old musical director/sound artist for the state’s Centennial Chatauqua tour, which brought an entourage of artists and performers to small towns in Colorado, conducting workshops and theatrical performances. The last stop on the tour was Rangely. Bruce was composing a site-specific musical piece using recordings of local ambient sounds in each town, and one night in Rangely he was walking on Main Street with his sound gear, when a big black pick-up truck pulled up beside him. “We’ve got some sounds for you,” they said, and he got in. They took up out of town and up and down some hills, before pulling up beside a huge empty water tank. There was one entrance, a 19-inch portal. Inside it was pitch dark. They told him to go in.
Once he was inside, they began hammering on the Tank with rocks and boards. Bruce was frightened, of course, but when they stopped hammering, he forgot his fear. He found himself in the midst of the most astonishingly resonant sound cloud he’d ever heard. Years later, music critic Alex Ross would describe it: “It’s not a cathedral-style resonance, which dissipates in space as it travels. Instead, sound seems to hang in the air, at once diffused and enriched. The combination of a parabolic floor, a high concave roof, and cylindrical walls elicits a dense mass of overtones from even a footfall or a cough.”
Even that night, Bruce brought his musician friends back to the Tank, where they had the first of many jam sessions in the resonant seven-story steel structure. They would return for decades.
In 2013, when the Tank was threatened to be sold for scrap, Bruce led an effort to rescue it, running two successful Kickstarter campaigns and securing the help of town officials and hundreds of supporters. The Tank was converted into an up-to-code performance space/assembly hall with a recording studio, and the organization formed to save it, The Friends of the Tank, formed a nonprofit and hired staff for what would become The Tank Center for Sonic Arts.
Under Bruce’s leadership, the Tank attained a national reputation, with an annual Solstice Festival, major concerts by Grammy-winning artists, dozens of recording sessions each year, a record label, and free Open Saturdays where anyone can come and sing, play, holler, or just listen.
Just listening was Bruce’s ideal in life. Speaking of people’s reaction to the Tank’s resonance, he said, “People feel a genuine awe. They may ascribe it to the Tank, but I ascribe it to the awakening of the ears in a predominantly visual age. Our ears get so abused on a daily basis. Our modern society makes a bad offer to them. We don’t use the hearing sense the way we evolved to, as hunter-gatherers interacting with nature. In there, you feel the sound on the skin, you feel it in your gut. What people are in awe of is their own ability to hear properly.”
The Tank was just one facet of Bruce’s career as a sound artist. He served as the first Director of Sound and Music for the Denver Center Theatre Company, led the Bruce Odland Big Band, and worked in independent film and theater with Peter Sellars, the Wooster Group, JoAnne Akalaitis, André Gregory and Wallace Shawn.
Bruce retired as chair of the Tank’s Board of Directors in July, 2026, assuming the title of Founder Emeritus.
He is survived by his wife, three children and their spouses, and a grandchild. A private family service will be held in Michigan, and a memorial is planned at the Tank for spring. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Tank.
The TANK Center for Sonic Arts | 233 County Road 46 Suite 2R | Rangely, CO 81648 US
Photo: Bruce Odland | Courtesy of The Tank Center for Sonic Arts
OTHER NOTABLE MUSICIANS’ DEATHS
Warning Signs of Suicide – National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or if you want to discuss, call the old numbers at 800-273-TALK or 800-273-8255 for English and 888-628-9454 for Spanish. Learn the signs of someone who may be contemplating suicide.
Posting for my Veteran/singer/songwriter/musician friend Troy Hoss: Heavy on my heart so here goes: This is a very real problem … 22 Veterans a day surrender to their demons. #SuicideAwareness | Call Veteran’s Hotline: 988 #1 or 844-647-1354
From Care2 via Jock Bartley on Facebook: Trump shut down our LGBTQ+ suicide and mental health hotline, but CANADA opened a US toll-free number to theirs… so our citizens can get help anytime, at no cost: 1-877-330-6366
Kindness & empathy have no borders.
If you want to know more about any of the musicians we lost, find them at http://www.wikipedia.com
September 2026
23: Jackie Jackson, 79, Jamaican bass player (Toots and the Maytals); Maureen Jones, 99, Australian classical pianist; Sergey Sosedov, 58, Russian journalist and music critic, head injury from a fall.
21: Angry Anderson, 79, Australian singer-songwriter (Rose Tattoo) and actor (Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome); Jorge Palma, 76, Portuguese singer and songwriter, cardiac arrest; Rick Sollo, 59, Brazilian singer-songwriter (Rick & Renner) and sertanejo music producer, helicopter crash.
20: Chad Gilbert, 45, American guitarist (New Found Glory), songwriter (“Hit or Miss”, “All Downhill from Here”) and record producer, pheochromocytoma.
19: Rudy Cheeks, 76, American musician (The Young Adults) and newspaper columnist (The Providence Phoenix). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Adults
18: Vector Lovers, 57, British electronic music producer.
17: Bryan Kelly, 92, English composer, conductor and academic teacher (Royal College of Music, American University); Gary McCracken, 75, Canadian drummer (Max Webster) and singer; Duncan Sheik, 56, American singer-songwriter (“Barely Breathing”) and composer (Spring Awakening), Tony winner (2007), heart failure; Kevin Spencer, 71, American musician (Dynasty); Sway, 44, British rapper and songwriter (“Little Derek”, “Still Speedin'”, “Level Up”); Patrick Zelnik, 79, French music publisher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Sheik
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynasty_(band)
15: Marcus Andersson, 52, Swedish drummer (Disfear), brain cancer; Rosalind Ashford, 83, American Hall of Fame singer (Martha and the Vandellas); Ronnie Dove, 91, American pop and country singer (“Right or Wrong”, “One Kiss for Old Times’ Sake”, “A Little Bit of Heaven”); Pye Dubois, 77, Canadian lyricist (“Tom Sawyer”, “Go for Soda”) and poet; Ben Saunders, 43, English-born Dutch singer (Follow That Dream).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Ashford
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Dove
