July 10, 2004

“Zippo Songs” from Vietnam GIs’ Poetry

(North Adams, Mass.) .) Phil Kline draws from Donald Rumsfeld’s speeches and the poems that GIs inscribed on their cigarette lighters during the Vietnam War, among other unusual sources, for his riveting song cycle. The result is a powerful meditation on the meaning of war. Kline will be at MASS MoCA to perform Zippo Songs: Airs of War and Lunacy on Saturday, July 10, at 8:00 P.M.

Kline’s music, which stretches across the aesthetic boundaries between avant-garde "classical" music and ambient electronica (not to mention a few adjoining territories) has been performed in Alice Tully Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Kitchen, the Whitney Museum, the New Museum for Contemporary Art, The Knitting Factory, Tonic, the Brooklyn Anchorage, Central Park and the streets of Greenwich Village. CDs of his music include Glow in the Dark and Unsilent Night.

Kline's early music training came from listening to records and playing guitar in garage bands. Later, studies at Columbia University and Mannes College of Music in New York convinced him to seek out unusual music and musicians. In the 1980s he founded the art punk band the Del-Byzanteens with filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, writer Luc Sante and painter James Nares, and worked on film and video projects with other prominent artists such as Nan Goldin and Wim Wenders

In 1990 he started composing for an orchestra of massed boom box tape machines, producing work that built on the tape loop and phrasing techniques of Brian Eno and Steve Reich, as well as the sound mass experiments of Glenn Branca. Bachman's Warbler for harmonicas and 12 boom boxes was premiered at the Bang On a Can Marathon in May 1992 and Unsilent Night, his archetypal outdoor mega-boom box event, was first presented in Greenwich Village that December

Zippo Songs is the first event in MASS MoCA’s Bang on a Can Music Festival and Institute. Students from around the world will gather at MASS MoCA from July 8 through July 24 to work with the masterful musicians of Bang on a Can. The Festival includes daily recitals in the galleries at 4 as well as other daily performances around the MASS MoCA campus and the North Adams community. In addition to Zippo Songs, highlights of the festival include a Bang on a Can All-Stars concert on Saturday, July 17, at 8 P.M. and the Bang on a Can Marathon on Saturday, July 24, from 4 – 10 P.M.

Tickets to Zippo Songs: Airs of War and Lunacy are $13 in advance or $16 the day of the show. MASS MoCA members receive a 10% discount. Tickets are available through the MASS MoCA Box Office located on Marshall Street in North Adams from 11 A.M. until 5 P.M. every day but Tuesday. (Extended hours July 1 – September 6 10-6 every day.) Tickets can also be charged by phone by calling 413.662.2111 during Box Office hours or online at www.massmoca.org at any time. Doors open at 7:00 P.M. for food and full bar before the show.

MASS MoCA, the largest center for contemporary visual and performing arts in the United States, is located off Marshall St. in North Adams on a 13-acre campus of renovated 19th-century factory buildings.

For Immediate Release
Contact: Katherine Myers
(413) 664-4481 x8113
katherine@massmoca.org