About Unsilent Night
Unsilent Night is an original composition by Phil Kline, written specifically to be heard outdoors in the month of December. It takes the form of a street promenade in which the audience becomes the performer. Each participant gets one of four tracks of music in the form of a cassette, CD, or Mp3. Together all four tracks comprise Unsilent Night. The fact that the participants play different "parts" simultaneously helps create the special sound of the piece. Participants carry boomboxes, or anything that amplifies music, and simultaneously start playing the music. They then walk a carefully chosen route through their city’s streets, creating a unique mobile sound sculpture which is different from every listener's perspective.
It all started in winter 1992, when Phil had an idea for a public artwork in the form of a holiday caroling party. He composed a multi-track electronic piece that was 45 minutes long (the length of one side of a cassette tape), invited a few dozen friends who gathered in Greenwich Village, gave each person a boombox with one of four tapes in it, and instructed everyone to hit PLAY at the same time. What followed was a sound unlike anything they had ever heard before: an evanescence filling the air, reverberating off the buildings and city streets as the crowd walked a pre-determined route. Phil says: “In effect, we became a city-block-long stereo system.”
The piece was so popular that it became an annual tradition, and then an international phenomenon, spreading across the USA and to other countries worldwide. Since 1992, it has been presented in over 50 cities and four continents, drawing crowds of up to 1,500 participants in cities like New York and San Francisco.
About his inspiration in starting Unsilent Night, Phil says: “It was a combination of my love for experimental electronic music and memories of Christmas caroling as a kid in Ohio.”
Flavorpill describes the New York event as: "An annual seasonal favorite, Unsilent Night is an open procession for an unlimited number of boomboxes that starts under the arch of Washington Square Park. Musically, it begins with delicate strains of Phil Kline's composition rising as marchers turn their boomboxes up to 10 and wind their way through the streets of the East Village, enveloped in the bubble of Kline's glorious ambient score. Unsilent Night’s pageant ends under the giant elm in Tompkins Square as the final notes once again reach up to the heavens, offering thanks for the past 45 minutes of joy and redemption."
On December 17 at 7:00pm, Phil Kline will lead a massive chorus of boomboxes from the West Village to the East Village in the 20th annual holiday presentation of Unsilent Night. People will gather in Washington Square Park, and less than an hour and mile later, end up in Tompkins Square Park.
In NYC, it is recommended that participants arrive by 6:45 pm at the arch in Washington Square.
Phil Kline will hand out a limited number of boomboxes—and cassettes and CD’s for those who bring their own players. The public is strongly encouraged to bring their own boomboxes and hold them high as they play the music.
The event is free, and will be held rain or shine.
Participants can e-mail unsilentnight@gmail.com for more information.
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CANADA
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INTERNATIONAL
Melbourne, Australia
Sydney, Australia
Berlin, Germany
Johannesburg, South Africa
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Middlesbrough, UK
Oxford, UK
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Phil Kline makes music in many genres and contexts, from experimental electronics and sound installations to songs, choral, theater and chamber music.
Raised in Akron, Ohio, he came to New York to study English Literature at Columbia. After graduation, he joined the downtown New York arts scene: founding the rock band The Del-Byzanteens with Jim Jarmusch and James Nares, collaborating with Nan Goldin on the soundtrack to The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and playing guitar in the notorious Glenn Branca Ensemble.
His early compositions grew out of his solo performance art and often used boombox tape players as a medium, most notably in the Christmas piece Unsilent Night, which debuted in the streets of Greenwich Village in 1992 and is now performed annually in cities around the world.
Other compositions include Zippo Songs, a song cycle based on poems Vietnam vets inscribed on their Zippo lighters, The Blue Room and Other Stories, written for string quartet Ethel, and Exquisite Corpses, commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars.
More recent works include the choral Mass John the Revelator, written for vocal group Lionheart; a piano sonata, The Long winter, written for Sarah Cahill; and scores for three evening-length dance pieces by Wally Cardona: Everywhere, Site and Really Real. The sound installation World on a String opened the season at the Krannert Center in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in September 2007 and SPACE for string quartet and electronics was performed by Ethel at the gala reopening of Alice Tully Hall in 2009.
2011 will see the premieres of A Dream and its Opposite, written for the La Jolla Symphony Orchestra, and Canzona a due Cuori, commissioned by the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble. Kline is currently working on an opera, Tesla, in collaboration with writer-director Jim Jarmusch. His music is available on the Cantaloupe, CRI and Starkland labels.
Keep up to date with Phil’s newest works, recordings and more at his website.