Boomboxes aloft for an Unsilent Night

A crowd gathers, each member holding a boombox aloft in what looks like mass homage to "Say Anything's" Lloyd Dobler. At a shouted command, each participant hits the "play" button, and slowly a miasma of postmodern classical music, influenced by the likes of Steve Reich and Brian Eno, emerges, sound waves oscillating their way into a tumbling array of unified chaos.

This may not sound like your typical Christmas celebration, but Unsilent Night is the holiday brainchild of a very atypical artist, New York-based composer Phil Kline, who got his start in the late-1970s No-Wave music and art scene.

"I'm an American rock 'n' roll kid who was into classical music," explains Kline, who mounts Unsilent Night in Los Angeles for the first time Sunday night.

His most successful band, the Del-Byzanteens, found him performing alongside future filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and artist James Nares. "There were no safety pins and Mohawks," he says. "We were definitely what were called 'art rockers.' "

Kline's fascination with arrangement and modern classical music would soon pave the way to early experiments with tape loops and boombox orchestras in a series of solo performance art works, ultimately resulting in what would become Unsilent Night.

Kline conceived Unsilent Night in 1992 as a combination Christmas party and art piece, using boomboxes as stand-ins for traditional instruments.

"The entire thing would be played back," he says, "but instead of having it ... where all the parts are on one tape, all of the parts are on different tapes played by different tape recorders. So they'd all be oscillating, off-pitch, out of sync."

Though the New York event began modestly, numbering less than 100 participants in its early days, the last few years have drawn crowds in the thousands, to Kline's delight and surprise. The numbers have been fewer at other locations, but he hopes these will increase as well.

The music that now constitutes the piece went through several variations over the years, as Kline struggled to develop a structure that would be simultaneously harmonious and off-kilter. He also wanted to evoke both a celebration of community and recognition of the depression that sometimes arrives with the holiday season.