Unsilent Night, West Coast Edition

Another bicoastal post, with a bonus shout-out to a former Back Stage West colleague and friend, Behnoosh Khalili, who imported the musical-crowd happening "Unsilent Night" to L.A. when she moved back there from N.Y. Now it's part of Downtown L.A.'s arts walk:

People bring their portable tape players to a designated meeting place, they're given copies of [Phil] Kline's "Unsilent Night" piece recorded on cassette, and everyone gambols down the street for 45 minutes, rain or shine, boomboxes doing their job in the gentlest way imaginable. Because of the inherent quirks of different tape players, the Doppler effect and various collisions with other ambient noises native to the greater metropolitan area, Kline's work moves and changes and comes alive as an entirely unique sonic organ.

They've sinced added CD and MP3 players to the mix. L.A.'s Unsilent Night is tonight; in New York, it will go down on Sat., Dec. 12 at the Washington Square Park Arch at 7 p.m. National listings here.