Phil Kline: Force of Nature (June)
Groundtone Day 4
Building on Force of Nature, the participatory composition that led over two hundred attendees through snowy paths during PS21’s The Dark, composer Phil Kline’s newest iteration of his processional work has been transfigured to glow under the rising dawn of summer’s first sun.
Join us for a participatory world premiere at sunrise on the summer solstice. The piece comes to life on portable devices, cassette players, boomboxes, cell phone apps, and bluetooth speakers carried by the audience. In the outdoors, the effect is magical, as the sound seems to come from everywhere, the air, the meadows.
The sunrise performance ushers in the first day of summer, the final day of Groundtone, and the first edition of the global Make Music Day in Chatham—marking a true celebration for those bold enough to rise early and participate.
Local youth and their families are invited to our season kickoff party on May 23, to participate in recording lines from poems and lyrics ranging from “Warm Summer Sun” by Mark Twain to “She’s a Rainbow” by The Rolling Stones. These recordings will then be used at the center of Force of Nature (June)’s aural experience.
Groundtone is PS21’s annual weekend-long celebration of adventurous music by an eclectic selection of today’s most original voices. Dazzling performances and immersive experiences take place across the PS21 grounds with concerts in our theater, fields, installations, and barns.
This year’s Groundtone features Sō Percussion in collaboration with Grammy-nominated songwriter Becca Stevens, pathbreaking harpist Parker Ramsay, and a full slate of artists who defy categorization. On June 21, PS21 will usher the globally-renowned Make Music Day to Chatham for the first time, with a sunrise musical procession created by Phil Kline; Annea Lockwood’s Home Ground, a new site specific work spanning the PS21 terrain; and the return of Sayer Mansfield’s Dive Barn.
Groundtone is four days of audacious music, unexpected collaboration, sound, and community in the PS21 landscape.
A survivor of New York’s downtown scene, Phil Kline is known for his range and unpredictability. From vast boombox symphonies to chamber music and song cycles and stage works, his work has been hailed for originality, beauty, and subversive subtext. Out of the suburbs of Akron, Ohio, Phil came to New York City to study poetry with Kenneth Koch and David Shapiro at Columbia. After graduation, he moved to the Lower East Side, cofounded the band the Del-Byzanteens with Jim Jarmusch and James Nares, collaborated with Nan Goldin on the soundtrack to The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and played guitar in the notorious Glenn Branca Ensemble.
Early compositions used large numbers of boomboxes, such as Bachman’s Warbler, or the outdoor Christmas cult classic Unsilent Night, now a global holiday tradition. Other notable works include Exquisite Corpses, written for the Bang on a Can All-Stars; the politically-infused Zippo Songs and Rumsfeld Songs; John the Revelator, a setting of the Latin Mass written for Lionheart; and the song cycles Out Cold and Florida Man, written for Theo Bleckmann, and Ghost Story for soprano Nicoletta Berry.
(Currently working on a surreal comic opera about a family in the apocalypse, Blink!)
