Phill Niblock and I had a close relationship, a working and a personal relationship. It couldn’t have been different. To-live-to-work, or, to-work-to-live was as natural for both of us as breathing fresh air. We first met in 1972, at Christian Wolff’s Burdocks event in Vermont and, shortly afterwards, I started to perform his music. When SEM expanded into The Orchestra Of The SEM Ensemble in 1992, Niblock was among the first I asked to create compositions for orchestra. The large number of orchestra pieces he composed speak for themselves and include pieces for two and three orchestras. Last August and September, at Ostrava Days 2023, it was the last time we spent together. There, he lectured to young composers and premiered his large orchestra piece High Noon. It was a part of a program, also entitled High Noon, which included Phill’s piece, as well as premieres by Roscoe Mitchell, Christian Wolff, Alvin Curran, and myself. It also included the Ostrava Manifesto, signed by all five of us.

No rational logic can explain my attraction to the work of Phill Niblock, but then, almost everything I do is guided by my intuition, often contradicting the rational. He has been a living example of John Cage’s statement that “composing, performing, and listening are all separate and not related”. Phill Niblock was a composer and yet, he was not a musician. At Ostrava Days 2005, Phill said: “I was not interested in being a musician… I was only interested in the structure of making music… Ach! Making music. I didn’t want to become a Petr Kotik! Oh, god!...* His music will be with us for a long time – I am convinced!” In late December, when Phill was admitted to the hospital and learned that the doctors can do very little to help him to recover, he called some of his friends – “… see you on the other side” was his last greeting.

*The entire transcript of Phill Niblock’s talk is part of the Ostrava Days 2005 Report.

Petr Kotik


Phill Niblock was my anchor. When I performed with him at Cafe Oto in London last year, we raised a glass (or three) to 50 years of friendship. When we said goodbye the day before he died, he did his best to make me laugh as I tried to tell him what he meant to me.

We first met in 1973, when I was 18 and a flute student of SEM Ensemble director Petr Kotik. Phill soon made pieces for us both, which were featured on his first CD, Four Full Flutes. Under his guidance I perfected tape splicing and had the privilege of editing and assembling these works myself, all the while deeply absorbing Phill's exacting approach to process and materials.

This precious experience, as well as the joy of performing his music countless times over the years, put me inside his work and taught me how to be a composer: have the discipline to choose what's essential and leave out all the rest, allowing the result to freely unfold in time and space.

Phill composed new pieces for me and gave me gigs for my own. As I gradually migrated to electric guitar and bass, formed bands and made installations, my 'sonic geology' has always been informed by Phill's perfectly poised balance between stasis and movement, choice and chance. His drones have been inspiration, touchstone and fundamental unifying element across all my work.

I used to tease him that he was the ‘Experimental Elvis’ or ‘Minimalist Madonna’: no surname required. His talent, energy, generosity and open-hearted personality tied together a huge community of diverse artists and fans... all of whom loved him and knew him just as ‘Phill’.

Susan Stenger

Remembering Phill

…finding my first Niblock record (Niblock For Celli, Celli Plays Niblock) in a sales bin of a Berlin jazz record store.

And for a while, his clashing oboe sounds greeted the callers on my old analogue telephone answering machine.

…listening to Phill’s music for the first time on his own sound system in his loft in Chinatown, Manhattan, at the high volume he liked, sitting in the middle of huge loudspeakers, feeling the beatings. Then we listened to Duke Ellington on the same system, at the same volume, drinking cheap red wine, talking about Ellington and Sun Ra.

…coming into his loft, Phill sitting in an old chair in the middle of the huge twilight-lit space, a BB gun in his hand. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Shooting rats,” he replied.

…doing our first piece, Didjeridoos And Don’ts, together in 1992. A thunderous didjeridoo piece, which we later often played in concert. And thanks to the mostly low frequencies we could played it live at 115 db—using a db meter to make sure it was loud enough.

…touring through the former Eastern bloc countries in the early 1990s in his old BMW, eating great local food and trying to decipher Cyrillic street signs in order to find the venue.

…emptying a bottle of nice, old single malt Scotch together during a three hour concert in London. Phill sat at a table controlling the sound and I walked through the space with a wireless mic. Whenever I came by the table, he grabbed the bottle from the floor, and we had a drink.

…working on and notating his first-ever (quasi-) traditional score for Disseminate, sitting at the thick, round, wooden table in his kitchen, trying to find out what should go into the score by asking him lots of questions.

…sitting on the floor of the wooden stage at NYU, performing the didjeridoo piece and the whole stage and my body started to vibrate with the low frequencies.

…playing a show together in Venice during aqua alta, water sloshing at the door of the venue.

…doing 10 pieces together and playing over 100 shows over the span of 32 years.

Where ever you are Phill…

no melodies, no harmonies, no bullshit — but good single malt and loud throbbing music.

Ulrich Krieger


We all new it was coming. Too many of our aged mentors have passed away over the last few years, yet it is still hard to process that Phill Niblock has left us.

I first met Phill in Buffalo in 1974, then again at a concert at The Kitchen in New York in early 1975. In typical Niblock fashion he invited me to his series at the loft, recognised me immediately when I showed up weeks later. It was already “all there” – the films, the music, the infinite hospitality and generosity, those never-ending evenings with fellow travellers. We quickly bonded as composer autodidacts with minimal tendencies, myself a recent La Monte Young and Media Studies Buffalo refugee, Phill a photographer and filmmaker who figured he had permission to create music himself after witnessing Morton Feldman and La Monte Young concerts in the 1960s and early 70s.

There was 20 years between us, and Phill instinctively took on multiple roles as surrogate father, advisor, supporter and networker on the one hand, colleague, companion and deepest personal friend on the other. There was no contradiction in these alternating modes, Phill was never in any way hierarchical, he was there for you on all levels, young or old, famous or not, sharing his international contacts, his humour, telling you who you gotta meet, showing his recently completed film and music works, recounting his recent acquisitions (romantic and technical), all in one breath.

After relocating to Berlin in 1984, I missed him greatly, understanding that Experimental Intermedia would forever represent my mythical NYC ‘home’ – a focal point and reference for both my own personal history and for a vanishing world. In the following decades, as my birth-house in Queens was demolished and NYC would become almost unrecognisable, Phill and the loft belonged among those few ‘dinosaurs’ left still unchanged. It was his uncompromising and stubborn vision, his lifestyle, with that chosen film stock, his favourite brown ink but most importantly the artistic project itself: an encyclopaedic filmed vortex of bodies at work and the vibrating collisions of sounding frequencies in space.

It is often forgotten that greater recognition came to Phill relatively late. After retiring as a committed teacher in the city university system, Phill took to the road at an unstoppable pace and though there were some frightening health issues over the last few years, he always bounced back – it was as if he could outlive us all! As his body finally gave in, Phill was crystal-clear in mind until the very end, always himself, still stubborn with humour and wit intact. The overwhelming international and multigenerational resonance after his passing has been a testament to the weight of this legacy, his work and his person forever inseparable.

Arnold Dreyblatt

My best friend and musical collaborator Susan Stenger introduced me to the music of Phill Niblock in the late 1970s when she took me to one of his Solstice events at 224 Centre Street, New York City. At the time, I had one foot in rock and punk and one in what was then called ‘New Music’. I thought that Phill’s music was one of the most ‘rock’ things I had ever heard. I found his music visceral, mesmerising, and enchanting, and his anthropology-meets-minimalism films were the perfect accompaniment. His dense sonics filled the room with a palpable ocean of radiant energy – a soundtrack for flowing blood and beating hearts; turn one’s head a few degrees and the universe shifted. It was life-changing. I ended up performing and recording his music over the next several decades, working with Susan, Jim O’Rourke, Thomas Buckner, Stephen O’Malley, David First, Seth Josel and David Watson among others. It was an honour that I treasure more than ever with his passing.

Robert Poss


Phill Niblock figured largely in my music life. He was at one of my first performances when I lived in Minnesota in 1980 and by 81 I had moved to New York. First off, I was very moved by his live performances, especially his marathon solstice film screening in his loft. Experimental Intermedia Foundation, to use a Japanese term, is a charmingly ‘wabi sabi’ space with strategically scattered large loudspeaker cabinets throughout. It has been a place we could all reassuringly find comfort in the fact that it would be exactly the same, never renovated, for decades.

The immersive experience of his work has been a major influence. Socially, the loft was an anchor for me, in the middle of a rugged life during the 1980s, while discouragingly working day jobs. I spent many evenings around Phill’s kitchen table, eating dinner or drinking red wine with groups of people and it always felt good, fun, inspiring even. Phill was inclusive, most of all he loved people and making connections for people. He used to carry a list in the breast pocket of his denim shirt, handwritten in miniature, of people and phone numbers. His knowledge of presenters, artists and spaces was encyclopaedic and he was always giving me tips for gigs. Phill introduced me to Paul Panhuysen who presented me at Apollohuis in Eindhoven and opened the door to the European festival scene, where I started to enjoy identity as an artist as a legitimate pursuit.

Over the years, Phill was always everywhere, I ran into him at festivals all over Europe. In his last years, it was great to see Phill was still everywhere, thanks his partner, Katherine Liberovskaya, who amazingly got him all around Venice, Berlin, Brooklyn, in his wheelchair. Thank you, Katherine.

Ellen Fullman

I’m writing some rambling thoughts on the legendary Phill Niblock an hour before I head to a celebration of his life at the Max & Moritz restaurant in Berlin. This was Phill’s favourite restaurant in Berlin, very rustic and old school, and whenever he was in town there would be wonderful gatherings at Max & Moritz. If Phill was around – in any city – there was always a get together. He loved bringing people together and hanging out, chatting and laughing until the wee hours. He’d always greet you with a cheeky grin and say: “What’s happening? What’s happening?”

I first worked with Phill in April 2000 when he was touring in Australia. Julian Knowles, David Haines and I performed his piece Guitar Two, For Four with him at Art Space in Sydney. I’d heard some of Phill’s releases but I wasn’t prepared for how LOUD and ecstatic this longform music was in a live context. His visual accompaniment was so unique and mesmerising. The whole experience was so joyous and immersive that I became addicted to playing the guitar piece with Phill and I was fortunate to do so a number of times over the years. If there was an opportunity to work with Phill I’d always jump at the chance. He was so much fun to be around. After our first show in Sydney we were packing up and Phill asked me “Where the party was?”. I’d only met him that night but the next thing I knew there was a large get together with all kinds of people at my small apartment, and many bottles of wine were consumed late into the night. That night Phill played us some of his recent unreleased pieces and they were absolutely gorgeous. I was surprised to hear that he was having trouble releasing them so I immediately wrote to Mike Harding and Jon Wozencroft of the Touch label hoping they’d be interested in releasing some of the material Phill played us that night. Soon after Touch Works, For Hurdy Gurdy And Voice came out, a release that is very special to me.

A week or so later we played another concert at the University of Canberra on my birthday. Just before showtime Phill asked me to improvise over his Ghosts And Others piece. I was pretty baffled that he would want me to do that as the piece was a sound collage of field recordings. I only had a guitar and an ebow with me so I ran to the university cafeteria and grabbed some cutlery and other objects so I could prepare the guitar, hoping to have more ammunition to make my contribution more ‘interesting’. He BLASTED the piece through the PA and I was totally out of my depth struggling to make sense of it all. As I sat there on the stage feeling very foolish I remember Phill standing on the side of the stage looking at me with a huge grin, really enjoying watching my embarrassing plight. Throughout the concert he kept plying me with whiskey as I played, and would yell “Happy Birthday!” to me over the din. Fond memories.

In May 2001 I was touring in Europe and had just played a week’s worth of shows around France in a trio with Keith Rowe and Robbie Avenaim. Our last show was in Rennes and the next day I would be playing with Phill at ZDB in Lisbon. I had an early flight to Lisbon that morning and hadn’t slept much at the French promoter’s apartment the previous night as it was one of those uncomfortable sleeping-on-the-living-room floor scenarios. I was more than happy to get out of there and the idea of playing Phill’s music in Lisbon that night made me feel better. I was quite anxious to head to the airport that morning and the promoter kept telling me that we had plenty of time. After a while I insisted that we leave, and as we headed to the airport I knew we were cutting it fine. When we finally arrived they had already closed the door for boarding and I’d missed the flight. I wasn’t happy. The airline representative told me that there would be no flight reimbursement. The promoter didn’t seem phased and he refused to buy me a new flight – he simply said, “You can just stay at my place if you want”. That was the last thing I wanted to do. I called Phill and he was really sweet and said, “Oh no, please don’t pay for a new flight, we’ll do another gig at some point”. But I remembered how awesome it was to play Phill’s music, I needed that fix again, so I grabbed all the cash I’d made from the French shows with Keith and Robbie and purchased an overpriced new flight on the spot. It was worth it. The gig with Phill was fantastic and after the show we ended up in a bar shooting the shit late into the night. The next morning Phill turned me onto the Teddy Charles Prestige album Evolution while he showed me gorgeous photos he’d taken of legends such as Ellington, Mingus et al. The more time I spent with him the more I kept discovering all these layers of Phill’s work and history that I wasn’t aware of.

So many other Phill memories pop into my head. Phill cooking crys cole and me a yummy meal with copious amounts of garlic at his place in Ghent just because we were in town for a few hours before we had to get on a train. Phill driving on his own non-stop from Budapest to Berlin to have a spontaneous dinner with Arnold Dreyblatt, Konrad Sprenger, Thomas Ankersmit and myself – just because he had a few hours to spare. Phill insisting (with his cheeky grin) on doing a remix of one of my pieces from my album Suspension. Huge parties at Phill’s loft in New York, the place always jam-packed with people, cheap wine and pretzels, where he would love introducing you to people from different scenes and places – somehow all these interesting, disparate people would end up in Phill’s orbit. I could go on and on.

My last long hang with Phill was a memorable visit at his Center Street loft along with David Behrman and David First. Phill had recently broken his neck after a fall, but that didn’t stop him from drinking wine, laughing and talking with us late into the night.

I can’t not smile and feel joy when I think of Phill. He was always around, always playing shows, always touring, always everywhere at once. He was one of those rare individuals whom we believed would be there forever. He truly loved what he did and he did it until the very end. How wonderful is that?

Oren Ambarchi


Last night in Berlin, about 20 musician friends of Phill’s met at Max & Moritz, one of his favourite restaurants. A big group dinner like that, to celebrate and remember him, could have taken place in dozens of other cities worldwide. He was the most well-liked and well-connected person I’ve ever met.

Phill and I first met in New York in 1999 when I was an exchange student. Illustrative of his curiosity, I think the first time we talked was when he actually came to one of a handful of concerts I had organised at my art school, possibly the first one. I found him wandering the halls, because it was, well, badly organised. Our first tour together, where I was the opening act and would also play one of his pieces during his set, took place in Japan in 2003. In the following two decades, we did somewhere between 100 and 200 concerts together.

It’s hard to overestimate the positive impact Phill had on my life – as he did on so many others’ lives. I'll forever be grateful to him for taking me on tour while I was still in my early 20s, for introducing me to probably hundreds of people, for putting me in the path of Touch/Ash International for my first album releases, and for the summers I spent housesitting his loft on Center and Grand St in lower Manhattan (home to the Experimental Intermedia Foundation and host to more than a thousand performances over the years).

Phill had a profoundly unfussy approach to contemporary composition. He flooded rooms with waves of sound, until you could swim in them: music as a kind of geological presence. Paradoxically, being Phill Niblock’s opening act for so many years might be one of the reasons I never became a full-on drone musician. No point in being a mini-Phill Niblock before the main course.

He also had a completely non-hierarchical way of interacting with people. Even as someone who was pretty much strictly a solo artist, he embodied a sense of community and longevity. Largely because of Phill, I’ve always assumed the experimental music scene is profoundly pan-generational (where people in their twenties collaborate with people in their eighties), equally welcoming to artists of all ages (where crowds of people in their twenties come to listen to someone in their eighties), and based on long-term friendly relationships between artists, curators, listeners and everyone in between.

In the early days, we'd drive into a city (Budapest or Basel or Belgrade or Bologna or wherever) in his high-speed Audi and he’d ask me to pull some notes from his shirt pocket while he drove, to call the people on there and let them know about tomorrow night’s concert and dinner party (composers, musicians, artists, ex-flings, random people that he’d met and found sympathetic). Phill never had social media or a booking agent, but seemingly hundreds of actual friendships all over the world. Not necessarily something for everyone to emulate (I certainly wouldn't be able to handle it!), but something to keep in mind, I think.

To me, Phill was like a longitudinal study of how to live a good life as an artist. The fact that his life and work continue to resonate in so many of us will be some relief from him being gone himself.

"It was a good tour,” he said, as we said goodbye on the phone the day before he died, “see you on the other side.”

Thomas Anksermit


Phill Niblock is dead. You might as well have told me that they had removed the North Pole, or that the Andes had been flattened. To say that this leaves a massive void is an understatement. At the goodbye Zoom call organised by his partner, Katherine Liberovskaya, even though he looked so fragile hooked up to all kinds of medical bullshit on his hospital bed, I had convinced myself he would pull through; “C’mon Phill! You’ve got this! See you in Ostrava!”

I had got so used to him ignoring any physical or health impediment and sitting by the mixing desk of whatever concert of his he was mixing, always with a glass of red wine and a twinkle in his eye, either playing solitaire, checking his decibelometre, or having a snooze. I met him first a long time ago in the UK where he was playing his drone music, but really got to spend time with him and Katherine in 2012. I was with Frédéric Acquaviva and was performing Acquaviva’s music and my own piece BIRD at Experimental Intermedia. It was my first time at EI and I was blown away by the atmosphere, by the fact that such a place could exist in hyper-commercial New York City with its eye watering rents and impossibilities. Like La Monte Young’s Dream House it really felt like going down the event horizon of a black hole where you are transported to a time when such things in such cities existed.

It’s not only his time bending music that had such an impact on me, but also his film The Movement Of People Working – choreography that stemmed from the beauty of everyday banal repetitive movements of working people from all over the world. The piece he wrote for myself and Guy de Bievre, V&LSG, was the first performance I ever did wearing earplugs. It was so freaking loud! During the rehearsals at the SPOR festival Aarhus, Phill came shooting out from behind the mixing desk with his decibelometer: “Hey Loré!! You’re way too loud!!” How the hell he could tell is still a mystery to me. Making this piece also involved a white-knuckle car ride from Ghent into the heart of the Belgian countryside to record the tracks with Guy. Phill liked to drive very, very fast.

Talking to The Wire publisher Tony Herrington at London venue Iklectik about Phill the other day, Tony said, “Phill was someone who united the tribes”, which is so true. If Phill was in town everyone went to dinner, at Max & Moritz in Berlin, or Evin Turkish in London’s Stoke Newington – in every city there was one restaurant that had been ’Niblocked’. It feels with the death of Phill that another wormhole into a past, where there was an underground scene, has closed up, where there was a true alternative to hyper-capitalistic zombie-formalism, and there existed a kind of solidarity between artists that most people are too scared or exhausted to muster now. We must all try keep the Niblock spirit alive.

Loré Lixenberg