World Winds (2017)
Quintet flutist, Karla Moe, knew Bruce Odland when they were students in Minnesota and she suggested we commission him for an environmental program we had coming up. In 2017, Bruce Odland, created a new work for the Quintet “World Winds”. This “sonification” uses data in real time on the earth’s air currents (http://earth.nullschool.net/) as a source for musical expression performed by the wind instruments. The composer treats the score as a game where each player responds to a fifth of the computer-visable wind currents in real time. You can see a performance here:
Bruce Odland (b.1952) is a composer of theater, dance, and film scores, and a pioneer in sound installations. Since 1977, he has transformed the resonance of nature and industrial soundscapes into harmonic music. He has created over 60 sound installations around the world, six of them permanent. In 2015 when ESI Design created a sculpture in downtown Pittsburgh in the Lobby of the new PNC Tower, they invited Bruce to create the sound world and workings for this futuristic and entirely useful sculpture. The smart skyscraper sensors and data system provide the mix information for data driven light displays and soundscapes responding to weather, energy usage, and all the elements that make this brilliant building so Green.
Bruce has collaborated with Laurie Anderson, The Wooster Group, Peter Sellars, JoAnne Akalaitis, Wallace Shawn, Andre Gregory, Peter Erskine, Tony Oursler, Dan Graham, Robert Woodruff, Bill Morrison, Stacey Steers, Ron Miles and many others. He has received artist grants and awards from NYSCA, Foundation for Performing Arts, Bermont Foundation, the DAAD Fellowship, Rensaleer Polytechnic Institute residency, Golden Muse, Helen Hayes, Golden Reel, and Focus awards, and a Prix Ars Electronica. Currently he is founding the TANK, a center for sonic arts and experimentation in an abandoned water tank in Western Colorado. His chamber works include Medea (Denver Center for Performing Arts) for oboe, bass clarinet and assorted percussion; Anthony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare Company, Washington DC) for Oboe d’amore, Clarinet, Flute;
Three Sisters (Denver Center Theatre Company) for string trio; Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare and Company, Lennox MA) Woodwind Quintet; Henry IV (ART Theatre, Harvard); and Quartet of French Horns. Most of his film scores are for small unusual ensembles.
He is the founder of The TANK Center for Sonic Arts, an old 60 foot railroad water tank located in Colorado. It has a reverb more extraordinary than the Taj Mahal, and is used as an underground studio by musicians and recording artists from around the country.
For more about Bruce see:
Sonic Thinker