Bring Your Boombox: Phil Kline's "Force of Nature" Takes Over Chatham Park
A living sound sculpture where the audience is the orchestra, from the composer behind "Unsilent Night," on Crellin Park Day.
Saturday, August 15, assemble 3pm, procession 3:30pm | Chatham, NY
PS21 presents "Force of Nature (Crellin Park)" on August 15, part of Crellin Park Day and the third installment of Phil Kline's mobile sound piece for the site. Everyone attending are the performers. Participants roam the park playing an electronic score on cassette players, portable speakers, and cell phones, moving through the landscape as a collective, wandering orchestra.
Kline has said the piece grew out of listening to people playing music around a neighborhood on a summer day—different songs, different sounds all overlapping—and wondering what it would sound like to actually orchestrate that chaos on purpose. The August score celebrates summer and incorporates recorded voices of local children, including members of the Columbia County Youth Theatre, coordinated by PS21 Executive Director Edgar Acevedo. No musical experience is required, and the whole thing runs about 33 minutes, framed as a celebration of community, summer, and sound.
This is the third "Force of Nature" PS21 has staged. The first ran in February with over 200 participants. The second gathered 90 people at sunrise on the summer solstice in June. The Crellin Park version reconceives that June performance for the park's open fields and paths.
Kline is a composer and Spencertown resident known for range and unpredictability across all his sundry activities, like boombox symphonies, chamber music, song cycles, and stage works. He came to New York to study poetry with Kenneth Koch and David Shapiro at Columbia, moved to the Lower East Side, cofounded the band 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 Glenn Branca Ensemble.
His best-known large-scale boombox work is "Unsilent Night," the outdoor Christmas piece that has become a global holiday tradition; other pieces include "Exquisite Corpses" for the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the politically pointed "Zippo Songs" and "Rumsfeld Songs."
To participate, download the Force of Nature app (available on Apple and Android) and bring a charged Bluetooth speaker linked to your phone, or use a cassette player—either your own or one of Kline's, available in limited supply on-site. Reservations are encouraged but not required.
Crellin Park, 2940 Route 66, Chatham, NY. Free, sign up at ps21chatham.org.
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After a decade of writing for RI (along with many other publications and organizations) Jamie took over as editor in 2025. He has a masters in journalism from NYU, a wonderful wife, two kids and a Carolina dog named Zelda.
