A moving piece of ambient public art, composer Phil Kline's Unsilent Night can be compared to a holiday caroling party, except that participants don't sing. Instead, each carries a boombox playing a separate cassette, CD, or MP3 that becomes part of the piece. In effect, the "performers" become single elements in a huge, mobile sound system. Performed within the confines of the city streets, Unsilent Night reverberates off the cars and buildings, resulting in a magnificent, drifting cloud of shimmering, echoing sound. The 43-minute piece includes chiming bells, choral voices, and various electronic effects.Organized by Robin Cox, Phil Kline's "Unsilent Night" will fill the streets of Indianapolis as participants slowly parade through the streets playing recorded harmonies and bells, enveloping first Fountain Square and then Mass. Ave in a gentle swirl of ever-evolving sound.ROUND ONE: At 6pm we begins at the opening reception at iMOCA in Fountain Square (1043 Virginia Ave). From 6:30pm to 7:15pm the music will wind around Fountain Square eventually proceeding to a conclusion at Grove Haus (1001 Hosbrook St.)
Made possible through the Glick Fund."Unsilent Night immerses the listener in suspended wonderment, as if time itself had paused inside a string of jingle bells." Jon Pareles, THE NEW YORK TIMES"Kline's boom box-chorale parade from Washington Square Park to Tompkins Square Park has become a bona fide holiday tradition. Kline's luminous, shimmering wash of bell tones is one of the loveliest communal new-music experiences you'll ever encounter, and it's never the same twice." K. Leander Williams, TIME OUT NY"Gorgeously ambient." NEW YORK MAGAZINE"A dreamy fruitcake of parts, tranquil even through its anarchy." Josef Woodard, LOS ANGELES TIMES"A marvelously fluid, traveling spatial sound sculpture that disintegrates and reforms at nearly every stop light... This is a holiday tradition that could give new music a good name." Kyle Gann, THE VILLAGE VOICE"Here's a gorgeous holiday-season sleeper from Bang on a Can's label, a joyous, continuous electronic collage full of wildly pealing bells and chimes, voices, wall-of-sound textures and more, as heard from multiple boom boxes moving though the streets of Greenwich Village." Richard Ginell, LOS ANGELES TIMES
This event is produced in partnership with Iridian Arts, iMOCA, and Grove HausBring Your Portable Stereo, Boom Box, iPad, or iPhone on December 6th, 2013 and join Iridian Arts, iMOCA, and Grove Haus for a walking holiday soundscape as part of FirstFriday! http://www.iridianarts.com/unsilentnight
