The Berkshire Eagle - Have you always wanted to be a part of an orchestra but don't play an instrument? The walking symphony 'Unsilent Night' is back
"Unsilent Night" composer Phil Kline, center, in a red beanie, speaks to the assembled before last year's performance in Adams.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY JUSTIN WAGG
NORTH ADAMS – “Everybody press ‘play’ in three, two … one.”
At the count of one, the music will start, coming from iPhones and bluetooth speakers and crackly boomboxes. And at once, the throngs of people playing the music will start to walk.
That’s right — on Dec. 1, “Unsilent Night,” Phil Kline’s beloved walking symphony, is back. At 5:30 p.m., this year’s attendees will gather around Martin Puryear’s “Big Bling” outside the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. (If you’re looking for it and unfamiliar, it’s 40 feet tall and looks like some kind of animal.) At 6 p.m. on the dot, they’ll embark on the path, winding and weaving through downtown North Adams.
For the uninitiated, the popular Northern Berkshires tradition has participants embark on a 45-minute walk while playing one of four pre-recorded tracks — anyone can take their pick of which — in the orchestral piece. Together, moving through city streets, they form a blockade of sound, resplendent with bells and harps heralding the holiday season. Last year, around 100 people participated.
“You’re just enveloped in the music. It’s so beautiful and the walk is fun and so many people are there,” Isabelle Holmes, who runs “Unsilent Night” in North Berkshire, said. “Kids, families, new friends, old friends.”
At last year's "Unsilent Night," the non-musical musicians make their way through downtown Adams, en route to the newly renovated Adams Theater.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY JUSTIN WAGG
“Unsilent Night” premiered in New York City’s Greenwich Village in 1992, a natural extension of Kline’s work as a contemporary experimental composer. In years prior, Kline had crafted tape-based sound installations like “Bachman’s Warbler,” which is performed by harmonicas and twelve boomboxes.
The event became a cult favorite among those in the know, eventually spreading to other cities. To date, it’s performed in well over 100 locations across the globe, from Hong Kong to Berlin. Emily C. Watts and Michelle Daly brought it to North Adams in 2014.
“It’s not very often that you’re asked to be outside for 45 minutes in winter at night,” said Holmes, who first attended “Unsilent Night” in 2016. That December, there were maybe 20 people there. But Holmes was immediately spellbound by it.
“If I’m playing the same track as somebody next to me, it’s not going to be synced up so it creates this very unique swirl of sound,” she said. “No matter where you stand, it’s constantly shifting and so many people are amplifying this music and walking around that it does sound kind of beautifully symphonic.”
An accountant by trade, Holmes has spent her life surrounded by artists. She used to be a dancer, her mother is a painter and her father is a musician. Her husband, Todd Reynolds, is a violinist and friends with Kline, who splits his time between New York City and Hudson Valley.
Kline has made a habit of getting involved with “Unsilent Night” performances, especially ones near where he lives.
So in 2017, when Watts was stepping down from her leadership role, Kline asked Reynolds and Holmes if they’d be interested in taking over on their home turf. The answer was an immediate “yes.”
“A lot of people hear about it and they’re like, ‘I don’t get what it is,’” Holmes said. “and as soon as they experience it, they’re like, ‘I understand the magic.’”
This year, for the first time, “Unsilent Night” is collaborating with First Fridays North Adams, the monthly event when downtown businesses stay open later than usual and citizens gather. This location has been set for more than a year, as the people at First Friday reached out about collaborating before last year’s performance had even happened.
Past routes have been in Adams, Williamstown and, yes, North Adams. So the steering committee, which is made up of six to nine “Unsilent Night” enthusiasts, got to work trying to find new ways to move through the city, finding a path with strange crevices that can amplify the sound in unique ways. And central to the program, Holmes said, is collaborating with local businesses that participants pass through.
“My first year, we walked through Ramunto’s and everyone picked up a garlic knot,” she said. “There’s always little surprises here and there.”
This year, participants will walk through the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts’ Gallery 51, they’ll pass an installation dance project, they’ll go through the underpass at Meng’s Pan-Asian, which Holmes calls “super reverberant.”
They’ve reached out to the company that brings horse-drawn carriages to First Fridays in December, and are hoping that music can be played from a carriage. “Fingers crossed,” Holmes said. “And part of the point is to incorporate the community who might not have known we were coming,” an aim only helped by participating in First Fridays.
Participants tend to go all-out both with finding creative ways to blast the music and to cover their own bodies in battery-operated lights. The past couple of years, leadership has handed out prizes in the categories Best Lights, Best Sound and Best Overall.
For those who don’t come with, say, a stereo model constructed to be a visual deadringer for a Grammy Award, the composer himself has got you covered.
Kline spends the year scanning eBay for 1990s Panasonic boomboxes, collecting them when they become available. Before every “Unsilent Night,” he appears with around 30 in his car, which people can grab for the path.
And after the countdown to begin playing the music, “we get the people together and just lead the way,” Holmes said. “And if it snows, that’s even better.”
IF YOU GO
What: Phil Kline’s “Unsilent Night”
Where: 4 Marshall St., North Adams
When: 5:30 p.m., Dec. 1, gather at Martin Puryear’s Big Bling installation. 6 p.m., walk begins. 7 p.m., walk ends at Hotel Downstreet.
Bring: Warm clothes, comfortable shoes, a way to play music, a flashlight or lantern, your friends and family.
Accessibility: Participants with limited mobility or other accessibility concerns are encouraged to participate as able and to contact organizers to discuss specific accommodations.
Information: unsilentnight.com
Aaron Simon Gross can be reached at agross@berkshireeagle.com.
