unsilent nighted

I just got home from Phil Kline's Unsilent Night, and I feel so strangely peaceful and transformed. What looked like at least 1000 people walked from Washington Square Park to Thompson Square Park carrying boomboxes, all simultaneously playing a cassette tape of Kline's composition. Because no two boomboxes play exactly the same way, the tapes gradually drift out of sync, creating this really rich spacial dimension to the sound. It's a very unique experience to be in a large group of people who are all collaborating in mass-communal music making. It's sort of a secularized modern-technology form of caroling, with the people we passed by on the street stopping everything they're doing just to listen to the beautiful sounds.

I recorded the whole thing (I also interviewed Kline last week) for a piece I am producing about the event for Studio 360. The piece will air next weekend, and it's due this Tuesday, so gotta get crackin'. I'll post a link to it here when it's up on the web...

ADDENDUM 12/22/2005
As promised, here is a link to the piece.
I also happen to have another piece on the same episode, about a bible depicted in legos. It's a reworked version of a piece that originally aired a few years back. This one's about half as long as the original, with less sound design, but new narration that I think gives it a stronger close.


(photos by Jake Dobkin)