25 years after this tradition began, New Yorkers still hoist boomboxes for ‘Unsilent Night’
HE annual tyranny of cheesy Christmas music is unavoidable. But for the last quarter of a century, Phil Kline’s offered New Yorkers a gorgeous, 45-minute respite from “Frosty the Snowman” and the like.
Inspired by the caroling he did as a child in Ohio — and the boomboxes he’d been experimenting with in the late ’80s and early ’90s — Kline led a band of boomboxtoting friends and followers through the streets of Greenwich Village in mid-December 1992, playing the symphonic piece he titled “Carol.” At his command, everyone hit play at the same time, creating a communal halo of sound. Two years later, a Village Voice write-up of the performance used the headline “Unsilent Night,” and Kline adopted the snappier title.
“The city has a different mood at this time of year,” Kline, 63, tells The Post. “It can be an anxious time. I decided to write something that was beautiful — like snow. Maybe I thought that it would be like a free gift that comes from the air.”
After a successful first performance, word spread — not just in New York, but across the country. One “Unsilent Night” performance even made it onto national TV in 2000, albeit accidentally, during the Bush-Gore Florida recount.
“The news was reporting from the courthouse in Tallahassee,” Kline says, “and behind the reporters, you could see people doing a performance of ‘Unsilent Night.’”
The twinkling symphony was released commercially in 2001. Since then, “Unsilent Night” has been performed on different nights in more than 100 cities, including Tokyo, Johannesburg and Melbourne, Australia.
Of all the host cities, Kline has a particular fondness for the San Francisco chapter of “Unsilent Night,” which attracts all sorts of characters. “There was one guy who would turn up in medieval Japanese armor made of bamboo and played flute along to the piece,” Kline says.
At its peak in New York City during the mid-2000s, the event, which now includes Bluetooth speakers and other sound systems, attracted well over 1,000 people. “It got scary,” says the composer, who lives in Chinatown. “I wasn’t sure how I was gonna get all these people through the streets without getting killed!”
Sometimes, celebs even join in the march from Washington Square to Tompkins Square.
“We’ve had Bill Murray show up for a couple of years now,” Kline says. Don’t be surprised to see director Jim Jarmusch in the mix, too: Back in the early ’80s, Kline and Jarmusch were in the no-wave band the Del-Byzanteens, and the two have been friends since the sixth grade. Kline says he had no idea that “Unsilent Night” would become a holiday perennial: “I don’t even think I anticipated a second one when I did the first one!”