Phil Kline

"Kline has graduated from 'experimental' to 'original'-he's one of America's most important compositional voices." - David Patrick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer, June 13, 2006

PHIL KLINE is a unique artist whose work employs music in many mediums and contexts, ranging from experimental electronics, performance art and sound installations to songs, choral, theater and chamber music.

Raised in Akron, Ohio, he came to New York to study English Literature and Music History at Columbia College. After graduating, he became part of the vital downtown New York arts scene: he founded the rock band The Del-Byzanteens with Jim Jarmusch and James Nares, collaborated with Nan Goldin on the ever-evolving soundtrack to The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and for many years played guitar in the notorious Glenn Branca Ensemble.

His earliest compositions grew out of his work as a solo performance artist and often used boombox tape players as a medium. Bachmans's Warbler for harmonicas and 12 tape loops was performed at the 1992 Bang on a Can Marathon, and the walking sound sculpture Unsilent Night debuted in Greenwich Village later that year. Unsilent Night is now performed annually in cities around the world.

The widely acclaimed Zippo Songs, a quasi-theatrical song cycle based on poems Vietnam vets inscribed on their Zippo lighters, had its first run at HERE in NYC in 2003. Locus Solus, a suite of songs and chamber works based on the proto-surrealist novel of Raymond Roussel, was first presented at the bizarre Ryerss Mansion Museum in Philadelphia in 2006.

Among his chamber works, Exquisite Corpses was commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars and premiered by them in 1997; The Blue Room and Other Stories was premiered by the string quartet Ethel at the Kitchen in 2002; and The Last Buffalo was commissioned by the trio Real Quiet and premiered at the Music3 Festival in San Diego in 2004.

Recent works include the full-length choral Mass John the Revelator, written for the vocal group Lionheart, commissioned by WNYC and premiered at the World Financial Center Winter Garden in 2006; and scores for two evening-length dances by Wally Cardona: Everywhere and Site. The large sound installation World on a String opened the season at the Krannert Center in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in September 2007. The 2009 season will see the world premieres of SPACE for String Quartet, written for Ethel as part of the Alice Tully Hall reopening festivities, The Long Winter, a sonata commissioned by pianist Sarah Cahill, and Really Real, a collaboration with choreographer Wally Cardona, featuring the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.

Kline’s music has been heard in every imaginable type of venue, from the streets of Greenwich Village, CBGBs and the Knitting Factory, to the Kitchen and BAM, Alice Tully Hall, London’s Barbican Centre and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Major awards include grants from the Rockefeller New York State Music Fund, Meet the Composer, NYSCA, American Composers Forum and the Mary Flagler Cary Trust. Recordings of Unsilent Night, Exquisite Corpses, The Blue Room and Other Stories, Zippo Songs, and John the Revelator are available on the Cantaloupe label.

Lionheart

Lionheart (Jeffrey Johnson, Lawrence Lipnik, John Olund, Richard Porterfield, Kurt-Owen Richards, and Michael Wenger) gives voice to medieval, Renaissance, and new-music repertoires in concert, on radio, and in recordings. Touring extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe, Lionheart has collaborated with other performers including Anonymous 4, and premiered new works by composers Julia Wolfe and Marc-André Dalbavie. 2009 saw the release on the Cantaloupe label of composer Phil Kline’s John the Revelator commissioned by WNYC Radio for Lionheart with the string quartet ETHEL. In December 2009 Lionheart continued its tradition of New York holiday concerts at the Metropolitan Museum and at The Cloisters in New York City. Lionheart’s 2010-11 season will include appearances at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C. , at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles (December 4), and return engagements at the Metropolitan Museum’s Medieval Sculpture Hall (December 21) and The Cloisters (April 17, 2011). Recent seasons have included engagements at the Aspen Music Festival, Virginia Arts Festival, Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, a return to the distinguished Music Before 1800 concert series in New York, and an appearance at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall as part of cellist Maya Beiser’s performance of Brett Dean’s Sparge la morte, based on a Carlo Gesualdo madrigal.

For its most recent recording on Koch International Classics, El Siglo deOro, Lionheart was hailed by Early Music America for their “rich, true tones and flawlessly blended harmonies…their superb articulation and impeccable sense of rhythm.” The ensemble’s CD of the music of Palestrina and his contemporaries and its CD, Tydings Trew, also garnered much critical praise and were released by Koch International Classics. Lionheart also released two CDs on the Nimbus label: MyFayre Ladye: Tudor Songs and Chant (1997) and Paris 1200: Chant and Polyphony from 12th Century France (1998). Lionheart is heard on Sony Music’s CD companion to A History of Western Music, and on NPR’s Christmas Around the Country II, a collection of favorites from NPR’s Performance Today. A new CD of Spanish repertoire premiered last fall. On radio, it has been featured on Performance Today, PRI’s Harmonia, WGBH, and the ensemble appears regularly on WNYC radio in New York.

In 1998 the six men of Lionheart began a collaboration with Anonymous 4, joining forces to explore rare and ravishing repertoire. They did two national tours together, the last being in the 2001–02 season. In December 2000 Lionheart furthered its commitment to presenting the work of living composers by premiering a new piece by composer Julia Wolfe as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. In the spring of 2003 it gave the world premiere of a new work composed for it and members of the Orchestre de Paris by composer Marc-André Dalbavie. The performance, which took place at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, was part of the Sounds French Festival. The ensemble gave the French premiere at the Présence Festival in Paris in February 2005. Other European engagements have included the festivals Musikpodium in Stuttgart, Tage Alter Musik in Regensburg, and the Covent Garden Festival in London.