Broadcasting live from PS21's Winter Festival The Dark. Phil Kline performs FORCE OF NATURE at the PS21 Pavilion Theater in Chatham, NY. Introduced by Wave Farm Co-Director Meredith Kooi.

FORCE OF NATURE (February) is a mobile, living sound sculpture, and outdoor soundwalk created by composer Phil Kline and performed by the audience participants, which roams the contours of PS21 as darkness falls, playing the music on cassette players, portable speakers, and cell phones. This night is February in full regalia, fierce and unflinching, beautiful in its icy indifference.

From vast boombox symphonies to chamber music and song cycles, Phil Kline‘s work has been hailed for its originality, beauty, and sly subversion. Raised in the suburbs of Akron, Ohio, Phil came to New York City to study poetry with Kenneth Koch and David Shapiro at Columbia. Shortly after graduation he moved downtown, cofounding the No Wave band the Del-Byzanteens with Jim Jarmusch, Jamie Nares, and Lucy Sante, collaborating with Nan Goldin on the soundtrack to The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and playing guitar in the notorious Glenn Branca Ensemble.

A master of song and found text, his most famed examples are the iconic Zippo Songs (based on poems Vietnam vets inscribed on their Zippo lighters) and Rumsfeld Songs (based on the Pentagon briefings of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld), both written for his muse Theo Bleckmann and influencing a new generation of political protest music. A song cycle about a different kind of madness followed: the strange, authentically American Florida Man, brought to life again by Bleckmann. Kline also often sets his own texts, such as in the Mass John the Revelator, written for early music specialists Lionheart, and the Sinatra-inspired monodrama Out Cold, another tour-de-force for Bleckmann, which premiered at the BAM Next Wave Festival.

The Dark is a new annual festival from PS21 : Center for Contemporary Performance that celebrates and elevates the depths of winter. Taking place February 16–22, 2026, the festival will unfold at PS21 and across Columbia County—in theatres, restaurants, libraries, saunas, and outdoor public spaces. Featuring more than 60 international artists and over 80 performances, The Dark offers a packed week of world-class contemporary performance, installation, music, dance, and theatre—all exploring winter as a time of community and solitude, fire and ice, darkness and light. A major new attraction for the region, the festival positions Columbia County as a year-round cultural destination—not just a summer one. It is a light in the dark—and The Dark is the light.