How A Rose

Arranged by Roomful of Teeth tenor Eric Dudley after Michael Praetorius’s 1609 setting of “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen,” this recording is one of a dozen pieces recorded by Roomful of Teeth at The Tank Center for Sonic Arts in Rangely, CO June 19-22, 2017. 

This past June, Roomful of Teeth completed four days of recording and produced a special community concert in Rangely, CO at The TANK Center for Sonic Arts. Among a dozen pieces recorded in the nearly hundred-year-old structure was Judah Adashi’s my heart comes undone. Roomful of Teeth’s summer solstice performance at The TANK is featured in a collection of Notable Performances and Recordings of 2017 published by Alex Ross in The New Yorker. The article includes a link to a special recording of Judah’s piece where intense gusts of wind and rain can be heard among the swirling and reverberant harmonies of The TANK during a sudden midsummer storm. 

The idea for the project began in the summer of 2016, when Roomful of Teeth artistic director Brad Wells learned of an intriguing venue in the high desert of Colorado. The space, located in the small town of Rangely, was a 65-foot-tall, 40-foot-wide steel water tower from the age of steam engines publicly known as The TANK. The structure has long been an underground destination for experimental musicians from around the country due to it’s rich acoustics and swirling reverberations of up to 40 seconds. Over the past few years, volunteers in Colorado have been converting the monumental structure into a public performance venue and recording studio.