phil kline

A veteran of New York’s downtown scene, Phil Kline is known for his range and unpredictability. From vast boombox symphonies to chamber music, song cycles, and stage works, his work has been hailed for originality, beauty, and sly subversion. Out of the suburbs of Akron, Ohio, Phil came to New York City to study poetry with Kenneth Koch and David Shapiro at Columbia. After graduation, he cofounded the No Wave band the Del-Byzanteens with Jim Jarmusch, Jamie Nares, and Lucy Sante, collaborated with nan Goldin on the soundtrack to The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and played guitar for 12 years in the notorious Glenn Branca Ensemble.

Early compositions evolved from performance art and used large numbers of boombox tape players, such as in Bachman’s Warbler and the Christmas cult classic Unsilent Night, a walking sound sculpture that has become a worldwide December tradition. other notable works include Exquisite Corpses, written for the Bang on a Can All-Stars; The Blue Room and Other Stories, a string quartet for Ethel; the orchestral work In a Handbasket, and Dawn Chorus, a chamber septet based on the song of the Western Meadowlark, commissioned for the U.S. National Parks System centennial and premiered in Badlands National Park, South Dakota.

A master of song and found text, Phil’s most famed examples are Zippo Songs (based on poems Vietnam vets inscribed on their Zippo lighters) and Rumsfeld Songs (based on the Pentagon briefings of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld), both written for his muse Theo Bleckmann and influencing a new generation of political protest music. The recording was named “best of the Year” by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Gramophone, Time Out, and Newsday, and was No. 1 on John Schaefer’s WNYC New Sounds countdown. A song cycle about a different kind of madness followed: the strange, authentically American Florida Man, brought to life again by Bleckmann. Phil’s most recent song cycle, Ghost Story for soprano Nicoletta Berry and Yarn/Wire, was commissioned and presented by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

Phil also often sets his own texts, such as in the Mass John the Revelator, written for early music specialists Lionheart, and the Sinatra-inspired monodrama Out Cold, another tour-de-force for Bleckmann, which premiered at the BAM Next Wave Festival. He is currently immersed in music theater projects, including BLINK, an upcoming surreal comic opera about a family in the ruined New Yorker Hotel during the apocalypse — an early version of which was workshopped by Works & Process at the Guggenheim in 2024.

In 2026, the art complex PS21 in Chatham, NY commissioned Phil to create two communal soundwalks on its grounds, entitled Force of Nature, as part of their acclaimed new festival “The Dark.” The first was written for the snowy paths at dusk in February (featured on the cover of The New York Times’ Arts section); the second for the sunrise on the Summer Solstice in June.

Phil Kline’s music is available on the Cantaloupe, Starkland, and CRI record labels.