From vast boombox symphonies to chamber music and song cycles, Phil Kline's work has been hailed for its originality, beauty, subversive subtext, and wit. Raised in Akron, Ohio, he came to New York to study English Literature at Columbia.  After graduation, he became part of the downtown New York arts scene: founding the rock band The Del-Byzanteens with Jim Jarmusch and James Nares, collaborating with Nan Goldin on the soundtrack to The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and playing guitar in the notorious Glenn Branca Ensemble. Kline's signature boombox composition Unsilent Night debuted on the sidewalks of Greenwich Village in 1992 and is now a cult holiday tradition. It has spread to the cities of Baltimore, Charleston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Diego, and San Francisco, as well as cities in Canada, Germany, the UK, Australia, and the Yukon. A public Christmas-time parade of hundreds of participants carrying boomboxes through city streets, Unsilent Night builds a peaceful, multi-dimensional sound environment of otherworldly voices and bells. Jon Pareles wrote in The New York Times: "It immerses a listener in suspended wonderment, as if time itself had paused within a string of jingling sleigh bells." Kline's achievements have been recognized with grants and awards from the American Composers Forum, Mary Flagler Cary Trust, Meet The Composer, the New York State Council for the Arts, and the Virgil Thomson Foundation.