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Phil Kline's Unsilent Night is an original electronic musical composition, written specifically to be heard outdoors in the month of December. It has happened around the world since 1992, but not in New Zealand... until now!

Starting at the outer front steps of the Wellington Train Station (hoping folks will take the train, bus or walk in for this event) we will make a luminous soundscape played on phones, bluetooth speakers and boomboxes carried through city streets. The audience becomes the performer! 

Each participant gets one of four tracks of music in the form of a mobile app, stream from SoundCloud, CD, or MP3. When played at the same time, the four tracks become Unsilent Night. The fact that the participants play different "parts" simultaneously helps create the special sound of the piece. Participants carry anything that amplifies music, and simultaneously start playing the music. They then walk a carefully chosen route through their city’s streets, creating a unique mobile sound sculpture which is different from every listener's perspective.

In addition to your phone/boombox/speaker, etc bring torches, fairy lights, glowsticks and any other lighting to make the end of the walk even more magical. 

It all started in winter 1992, when Phil had an idea for a public artwork in the form of a holiday caroling party. He composed a multi-track electronic piece that was 45 minutes long (the length of one side of a cassette tape), invited a few dozen 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 before: an evanescence filling the air, reverberating off the buildings and city streets as the crowd walked a pre-determined route. Phil says: “In effect, we became a city-block-long stereo system.”

The piece was so popular that it became an annual tradition, and then an international phenomenon, spreading across the USA and worldwide. Since 1992, it has been presented in 101 cities and four continents, and drawing thousands of participants in New York and San Francisco and now Wellington, New Zealand!

Note: if 9 pm is too late for the kiddies/tamariki, feel free to check out the daylight walk in Porirua that starts at 5 pm on the same day.

To download the app or get the music for our walk in Porirua, follow this link http://unsilentnight.com/participate

Phil Kline’s Unsilent Night. Copyright © 1992
by Phil Kline. Recording available on Cantaloupe Music at www.cantaloupemusic.com.