Unsilent Night

Sorry that this is such short notice, but for those of you in NYC who can withstand cold temperatures, I highly recommend Phil Kline's "Unsilent Night." Here's his description of it from his website:

Every year since 1992 I've presented Unsilent Night, an outdoor ambient music piece for an INFINITE number of boom box tape players. It's like a Christmas carolling party except that we don't sing, but rather carry boom boxes, each playing a separate tape which is part of the piece. In effect, we become a city block long stereo system!

In 2004 the piece will happen on Saturday December 18th. We will meet at the Arch in Washington Square at 6:45 pm, begin at 7 pm and proceed eastward to Tompkins Square Park, where the piece will end around 8 o'clock.

It would be really cool if you could join us and bring a boom box. The more tapes we run, the bigger and more amazing the sound will be. This past Christmas we had 100 boomboxes and over 500 people total, it was really spectacular... If you'd like to do it, please email me at boombox@mindspring.com so I will know how many tapes to make. If you'd like to do it but don't have a boombox, I have several dozen and you can grab one...and if you want to come and just listen, that's cool, too. Help us make a BIG (and joyful) noise.

I went to Unsilent Night last year for the first time, after meaning to go for several years before that. What got me to go was the fact that my friend Michelle Mercer was doing a piece on the event for NPR.

Last year, when we went, it was unbelievably cold, as the weather forecast for tomorrow is promising. But we had a wonderful time. Michelle got to run around with her microphone interviewing everyone (including me!) and recording the sound of the music itself. You can hear her piece on NPR's site, including where I describe what the music sounds like to me.

And speaking of Michelle, I'm so excited that her first book, Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter, is available now. It's gotten two great reviews already, including this one from Publishers Weekly:

Legendary jazz saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter gets an appreciative appraisal in this excellent biography by music journalist Mercer, who follows this "determinedly eccentric" genius from his early days with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in the late 1950s, through his stunning work with the Miles Davis Quintet in the 1960s, to his popular jazz-rock fusion band Weather Report in the 1970s and his ongoing recording and performing. She carefully details his early influences, including his mother's tireless indulgence of his creative whims and his fascination with the 1948 film The Red Shoes, whose central conflict—living for oneself versus living for one's art—would define his career. Mercer expertly investigates Shorter's relationships with the two pianists who most influenced his music, fellow Davis Quintet member Herbie Hancock and Weather Report co-leader Joe Zawinul, as well as the impact of his Buddhist faith on his music. Mercer also shines in her consideration of some Shorter's less critically acclaimed efforts, including his genre-defying work with Joni Mitchell and Brazilian pop singer and composer Milton Nascimento. Interviews with Shorter, Carlos Santana, Amiri Baraka and dozens of others lend depth and tone to this clear-eyed account.

Michelle has also covered Brazilian music for NPR, like in these pieces, on forro music, Egberto Gismonti, and CDs by Tribalistas and Celso Fonseca. And here's a link to all of her NPR stuff.