Phil Kline's Shimmering Soundscape UNSILENT NIGHT Created By The Public In 35+ Cities This December

This December, composer Phil Kline's mobile surround sound-sculpture UNSILENT NIGHT - a landmark in avant-garde public sound art - takes place in more than 35 cities across the United States, Canada, and Europe. Streets, parks and sidewalks will come alive with "a shimmering sound-wall of bells and chimes that is dreamlike to wander through in the December nip" (The Village Voice).

Unsilent Night has spread around the world primarily through word of mouth. It is simple to present and participate in, and beautiful not just for what The New York Times calls its "phosphorescent sound" but because of the sense of community it fosters. Each person carries only one part of the electronic score, but collectively the group creates the emotionally enveloping experience-like players in an orchestra.

This year's flagship New York City event celebrates its 30th year and takes place Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 6:00 p.m. when Phil will lead a massive chorus of boomboxes from the West Village to the East Village. Participants will gather at the arch in Washington Square Park, and less than an hour and mile later, end up in Tompkins Square Park.

Meanwhile, throughout the month similar parades will play out in dozens more cities.

Unsilent Night responds to the unique qualities of each location and community: the people, architecture, lay of the land, weather. Examples this year:

• Adventurous new music ensembles producing Unsilent Night include Nief-Norf in Knoxville; The Interference Series in Flagstaff; Bent Frequency in Atlanta; Relâche in Philadelphia; Present Music in downtown Milwaukee; and the Northern Lights Project in Derry, Ireland.
• In the countryside and parks: The gloriously serene Art Omi sculpture park in upstate NY presents its third edition in its fields; a coalition in the Berkshires that includes MASS MoCA, The City of North Adams, Williams College, Todd Reynolds and Isabelle Holmes finds fun ways to present it annually; it is becoming a seasonal tradition along the trails of Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston; and Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center has long presented it around Washington Park.
• Some are quite intimate, gathering groups of friends in towns like Kingston, Newnan, Malden, and for the first time ever, two NJ settings: Montclair and Asbury Park.
• Wineries and libraries take to it too, like Left Foot Charley Winery in Traverse City (11 years strong now), and St. Albert Public Library in Alberta, a new one this year.
• Universities are drawn to Unsilent Night, and this year sees renditions at Texas Tech University in Lubbuck; Goethe University in Frankfurt; University of Georgia in Athens, where former NPR producer Mark Mobley has been a champion of the piece; and Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, where the walk includes a stop in a parking garage, blasting Unsilent Night through car speakers to get a true echo chamber.
• The oldest continuous Unsilent Night outside of NYC is the San Francisco edition, which always ends with a stunning descent into Dolores Park.

Unsilent Night is an original composition by Phil Kline, written specifically to be heard outdoors in the month of December, always as a free event. It takes the form of a promenade in which the audience becomes the performer (each participant gets one of four tracks of music that they play simultaneously), walking a carefully chosen route through a city's streets.

It started in winter 1992, when Phil had an idea for a public artwork in the form of a holiday caroling party. He composed a four-track electronic piece that was 45 minutes long (the length of one side of a cassette tape), invited some 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: an evanescence filled the air, reverberating off buildings and streets as the crowd walked a pre-determined route, creating a mobile sound sculpture different from every listener's perspective. "In effect, we became a city-block-long stereo system," says Phil. The piece was so popular that it became an annual tradition, and then an international phenomenon.

While technological advances and a mobile app (Android and Apple) allow the piece to now be played through a multitude of devices, Phil Kline originally designed the piece to incorporate the unreliability, playback delay, and quavering tones of cassette tapes. "Today most people use digital audio players, so I make the audio available in that format as well-but there's something about the twinkling, hallucinatory effect of a warbling cassette tape that I enjoy," he says.

The studio recording of UNSILENT NIGHT, which layers all the tracks, is available on Bang on a Can's Cantaloupe Music label.

From vast boombox symphonies to chamber music and song cycles, Phil Kline's work is known for its originality, beauty, sly subtext, and wry humor. Raised in the suburbs of Akron, Ohio, Phil came to New York City to study poetry with Kenneth Koch and David Shapiro at Columbia. Shortly after graduation, he moved to the East Village, cofounded the rock band the Del-Byzanteens with Jim Jarmusch, James Nares, and Luc Sante, collaborated with Nan Goldin on the soundtrack to The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and played guitar in the notorious Glenn Branca Ensemble.

Some of his early compositions evolved from performance art and used large numbers of boomboxes, such as Bachman's Warbler and the outdoor Christmas cult classic Unsilent Night, which is now an annual holiday tradition celebrated around the world. Other notable works include Exquisite Corpses, written for the Bang on a Can All-Stars; the politically-infused Zippo Songs and Rumsfeld Songs; John the Revelator, a setting of the Latin Mass written for early music specialists Lionheart; and the Sinatra-inspired song cycle Out Cold, written for Theo Bleckmann and premiered at BAM's Next Wave Festival. Phil is currently immersed in songs and music theater, including a third song cycle for Bleckmann, Florida Man, and lives and dreams of Nikola Tesla as enacted by the honorable spirits of the Grand Gotham Hotel, an opera in collaboration with filmmaker Jim Jarmusch.

His music is available on the Cantaloupe, Starkland, Innova, and CRI labels.