Categories
Recent News
Press Quotes
Recent News
Phil Kline soundscape “Force of Nature (June)” to premiere in PS21’s landscape 6/21/26 (part of “Groundtone”) — Chatham, NY — Starting point: Meet at 5:23am at PS21’s Pavilion Theater in Chatham, NY.
In February, Force of Nature led over two hundred attendees through snowy paths on the campus of PS21. Now, PS21 brings Phil Kline’s newest iteration of his processional work, which has been transfigured to glow under the rising dawn of summer’s first sun, as part of the Groundtone festival. Each participant plays one of three tracks of music simultaneously (Phil will hand out cassettes and boomboxes, or you can download the new Force of Nature app and use your phone with a portable bluetooth speaker). Commissioned by PS21.
New Phil Kline soundscape “Force of Nature (February)” to premiere in PS21’s landscape 2/16/26 (part of “The Dark” festival) — Chatham, NY — Starting point: Meet at 4:30 at PS21’s Pavilion Theater in Chatham, NY. Procession begins at 5pm.
PS21’s bold new winter-embracing festival, “The Dark,” presents the world premiere of Phil Kline’s Force of Nature (February), a mobile, living sound sculpture. Audience members are the performers, creating a celestial sonic procession across the PS21 grounds at dusk — a new ritual and a vast communal sound sculpture. Each participant plays one of three tracks of music simultaneously (Phil will hand out cassettes and boomboxes, or you can download the new Force of Nature app and use your phone with a portable bluetooth speaker). Commissioned by PS21.
It is a light in the dark—and The Dark is the light.
Phil Kline’s cult classic Unsilent Night to be performed outdoors by dozens of cities throughout the month of December 2025.
Check the schedule and dates here: https://www.unsilentnight.com/schedule
Unsilent Night is a mobile, outdoor sound sculpture in which the audience becomes the performer. Composed in 1992, this multi-track electronic ambient piece has become a beloved annual holiday tradition for people around the world.
World Premiere of Hum, for viola da gamba quartet Parthenia, November 23 at the Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center
The world premiere of Phil’s viola da gamba piece Hum will be performed at the Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center on November 23, 2025 at 4:00pm. This is a new work written for and performed by Parthenia Viol Consort. The performance will also include selections from Kline’s 2001 song cycle, When I Had a Voice (with texts from David Shapiro), and will feature soprano Elizaveta Kozlova with Parthenia.
Parthenia will also perform new work by Richard Einhorn, Frances Blaker, and Christopher DiVincenzo.
World Premiere of Ghost Story, Feb 23 at Gardner Museum in Boston
The world premiere of Phil’s song cycle Ghost Story will be performed at the Gardner Museum in Boston, MA on February 23, 2025 at 1:30pm. The cycle of 6 songs inspired by Isabella Stewart Gardner will be performed by Yarn/Wire and soprano Nicoletta Berry. The work was commissioned by the Gardner Museum.
Unsilent Night Presented in 30 Cities in December 2024
Phil’s piece, Unsilent Night, which has been presented across the globe every December since 1992, is being presented in 30 cities this month. The luminous soundscape is played by the public on boomboxes and speakers carried through city streets (or anywhere). 2024 cities include Berkeley, CA; Winchester, VA; Claremont, NH; Vancouver, BC; North Adams, MA; Monticello, MN; Atlanta, GA; Cleveland, OH; Chicago, IL; Washington, DC; San Francisco, CA; Frankfurt, Germany; Tours, France; and the flagship event, hosted by Phil himself, in New York City.
Press Quotes
“Magic was happening as you sat there. Here was a real original.”
— Paul Griffiths, The New York Times
“Phil is sort of a prodigy and a late bloomer at the same time.”
— Lucy Sante, The New York Times
“One of this era’s most fearlessly relevant composers.”
— Lucid Culture
“Phil Kline long ago declared independence from any musical Establishment, by inventing the orchestra of boomboxes—hundreds of them, scattered and only loosely synchronized…Kline has a cinematic ear. What might merely have furnished the soundtrack to screen clichés becomes, in his hands, the raw material for a set of sensational études.”
— Justin Davidson, New York Magazine
“What is consistent throughout Kline’s harmonic language is the emotional directness and expressiveness of his writing.”
— AllMusic
“Kline takes you and your expectations and directs them somewhere startling and fresh.”
— New Music Box
“Downtown composer Phil Kline is one of the more fascinating talents around.”
— Jeff Simon, Buffalo News
“Kline’s musical styles cast a wide net. They range from eerie electro-acoustical evocations of a bygone era of honky tonks to the muted tensions between sky and earth of nomadic space… His transitions flow as easily as a ride on a cruising Lear Jet.”
— Ellen Pearlman, The Brooklyn Rail
“Everything he does—as Cage said of Feldman’s music—is just almost too beautiful.”
— Kyle Gann, The Village Voice
“Downtown Kline may be, but his sensibility is symphonic.”
— Kyle Gann, The Village Voice
“Led Zep riffs and boom box tape loops never had such profundity.”
— Leopold Froehlich, Playboy
“one of the more striking composers that the Bang-on-a-Canners have given relatively wide exposure to. Phil Kline first made an impression through his pieces for harmonica and boom boxes that with single-minded obsession turn simple musical materials into arrestingly elaborate sonic experiences.”
— Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times
“Kline’s settings are at once intimate, peaceful, darkly telling, and peculiarly sacred removed and elevated, as if looking back from a higher plane.”
— Stereophile
“memorable stuff with a pointed sense of humor…almost cinematic.”
— Dan Buckley, Tuscon Citizen
“Kline spins subtle musical threads that suspend horror and desperation in a web of almost spiritual contemplation.”
— Gramophone
“Few composers write for voice so perfectly and set a lyric so movingly.”
— Theo Bleckmann
“A strange and beautiful mind.”
— Jim Jarmusch
“mindful of tradition, happy to flout convention”
— Allan Kozinn, The New York Times
“Kline has graduated from ‘experimental’ to ‘original’—he’s one of America’s most important compositional voices—thanks to his burning urge to communicate, and not things that can be reduced to a charismatic sentence. His pieces become part of your inner life no matter how little you understand them.”
— David Patrick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer
“The always-intriguing composer Phil Kline.”
— New York Magazine
“Downtown new-music hero”
— New York Magazine
“The downtown master.”