Park Avenue Armory Hosts Additional Concert as Part of Tune-In Music Fest

Park Avenue Armory has announced an additional concert in the line-up for its second Tune-In Music Festival, featuring four artists whose critical thinking and output have influenced and been influenced by Philip Glass and whose eclectic offerings represent a wide range of musical styles and genres. The Armory's Tune-In Music Festival will be held February 23-26, 2012, featuring and co-curated by the iconic composer Philip Glass on the occasion of his 75th birthday. The Armory's soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, with its cathedral-like acoustics and informal character, will set the scene for a concert environment that is at once both immersive and intimate, erasing the confines and eliminating the formalities of traditional concert halls.

The additional concert, to be held Sunday, February 26, at 12:00 p.m., will feature appearances by Nico Muhly, Tania León, Vijay Iyer with his trio tirtha, and Zack Glass, son of Philip Glass. Each artist will offer his or her own tribute to Glass, who selected the artists for this program based on their musical ingenuity, their shared interests and musical tastes, and their dynamic influence on one another.

At 30, Nico Muhly, who lists Glass as one of his early inspirations, is one of today's most in-demand composers, with recent commissions from major performing arts institutions including: Carnegie Hall, where his song "The Adulteress" was part of soprano Jessica Rivera's debut; the Britten Sinfonia, who premiered Muhly's song cycle "Impossible Things" with tenor Mark Padmore and violinist Pekka Kuusisto; the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center Theater Opera/Theater Commissions Program, in a co-production with the English National Opera, who commissioned Two Boys, his first full-scale opera; and, the Gotham Chamber Opera, Music-Theatre Group and the Opera Company of Philadelphia, co-commissioners of Dark Sisters. In his Armory appearance, Muhly will perform original works for solo piano and works with violist Nadia Sirota.

1With a career that includes honors such as an induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Tania León has collaborated with such diverse artists as John Ashbery, Derek Walcott, Rita Dove, Fae Myenne Ng, Jamaica Kincaid and Margaret Atwood. She has received commissions from many of the foremost institutions worldwide, including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and New World Symphony, to the Koussevitzky Foundation, Fest der Kontinente (Hamburg, Germany), the Gewandhaus Orchester, and the NDR Sinfonie Orchester, among many others. León's Armory performance will include original works for solo piano.

Perhaps newest in Glass's orb is the pianist and composer Vijay Iyer, who has formed the trio tirtha with the pioneering guitarist Prasanna, a celebrated South Indian classical music virtuoso, and the prodigiously gifted tabla player Nitin Mitta. The group will perform compositions by Iyer and Prasanna that achieve a natural and organic synthesis of traditions. The result is a 21st-century global chamber music that mixes East with West and that is vibrantly alive.

Zack Glass has explored nearly every imaginable genre, starting with classic rock and punk at a young age. Travel in West Africa and Latin America led to playing guitar for African and Reggae bands and an exploration of world music. In his solo career, he has explored almost every style of popular music most recently being influenced by folk, country, and classic rhythm and blues. He has shared the stage with some of this century's greatest musicians-Steve Earle, Keb' Mo', Patti Smith, Suzanne Vega, Al MacDowell, Andrew Sterman and Eddie Bobe-as well as a number of up-and-coming artists; Vampire Weekend, The National, and jazz trumpeter Mark Rapp. At the Armory, Glass will appear with singer/songwriter Ruben Gonzalez performing works from his recently released CD, "Southern Skies."

Comprised of five distinct programs over the span of four days, the Armory's second annual Tune-In Music Festival will feature the music of Philip Glass, including his definitive work Music in Twelve Parts, as well as music, poetry, and art created by and performed by his muses, collaborators, and those in his sphere who have been influenced by him. In addition to the concert with Muhly, Iyer, Leon, and Glass, the four concerts are:

Kaddish Thursday, February 23, at 7:30 p.m. As a friend and frequent collaborator with the great Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass's affinity and reverence for the late poet will be honored with an Armory world premiere, commissioned by the Park Avenue Armory and featuring a score by Grammy Award Winning jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, a visual design by "Gonzo" artist Ralph Steadman, and the conceptual energy of legendary music producer Hal Willner, who will also be a narrator. Conducted by Frisell, an eight-piece ensemble will accompany a reading of Ginsberg's Kaddish. One of the greatest works to emerge from the Beat Generation, the poem is a sprawling, propulsive lament to Ginsberg's mother and a reflection on his own estrangement from Judaism.

The Poet Speaks Friday, February 24, at 7:30 p.m. Longtime collaborator Patti Smith and Philip Glass present "The Poet Speaks," in a rare New York appearance. The two musical icons will perform original work individually and together, with music and readings celebrating their favorite poets including Ginsberg and William Blake. The evening culminates in a reading of Ginsberg's epic Wichita Vortex Sutra ? set to music by Glass and recited by Smith.

Music in Twelve Parts Saturday, February 25, at 5:00 p.m. The Philip Glass Ensemble will offer a rare performance of the entire Music in Twelve Parts, Glass's epic minimalist composition which was considered his "breakthrough" work. Over the course of the evening, the audience will be enveloped in this work described by music critic Tim Page as "both a massive theoretical exercise and a deeply engrossing work of art."

Another Look at Harmony Sunday, February 26, at 6:00 p.m. The Festival concludes with the Glass's Another Look at Harmony, a post-minimalist choral work Glass started in 1975 for organ and 100 voices, performed by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the Collegiate Chorale, and organist Michael Riesman, music director and keyboardist of The Philip Glass Ensemble conducted by James Bagwell.

Tickets for the Armory's Tune-In Festival will go on sale to the public November 29. Visit www.armoryonpark.org or for tickets and information, or call (212) 933-5812.

Thursday, Feb 23 at 7:30PM: KADDISH (World Premiere) Tickets: $45, $25 (floor seating)

Friday, Feb 24 at 7:30 PM: Philip Glass AND Patti Smith: THE POET SPEAKS Tickets: $45, $25 (floor seating)

Saturday, Feb 25 at 5:00 PM: MUSIC IN 12 PARTS The Philip Glass Ensemble Tickets: $50, $30 (floor seating); Meals: $30, $25 (vegetarian)

Sunday, Feb 26 at 12 PM: AFTERNOON CONCERT Nico Muhly, Nadia Sirota, tirtha (Vijay Iyer with Prasanna & Nitin Mitta), Tania León, Zack Glass, and Ashley Macisaac. Tickets: $35, $15 (floor seating)

Sunday, Feb 26 at 6:-00 PM: ANOTHER LOOK AT HARMONY - PART IV Tickets $35, $15 (floor seating)

For more than five decades, Phillip Glass continues to be at the forefront of contemporary music and art. In the early 1960s, Glass spent two years of intensive study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and while there, earned money by transcribing Ravi Shankar's Indian music into Western notation. By 1974, Glass had a number of innovative projects, creating a large collection of new music for The Philip Glass Ensemble, and for the Mabou Mines Theater Company. This period culminated in Music in Twelve Parts, and the landmark opera, Einstein on the Beach for which he collaborated with Robert Wilson. Since Einstein, Glass has expanded his repertoire to include music for opera, dance, theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and film. His scores have received Academy Award nominations (Kundun, The Hours, Notes on a Scandal) and a Golden Globe (The Truman Show). Symphony No. 7 and Symphony No. 8-Glass' latest symphonies-along with Waiting for the Barbarians, an opera based on the book by J.M. Coetzee, premiered in 2005. Several new works have been unveiled recently, including Book of Longing, a collaboration with Leonard Cohen (2007, Luminato, Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity) and Appomattox (2007, San Francisco Opera), an opera about the end of the Civil War. The English National Opera performed Glass' Satyagraha in London in conjunction with New York's Metropolitan Opera who performed the piece in New York in April 2008. His most recent opera Kepler premiered in Linz in September 2009. Glass continues to tour solo and with The Philip Glass Ensemble. In 2012, Glass's 75th birthday will be marked with worldwide celebrations that include his first performances with the New York Philharmonic, his opera Satyagraha at the Metropolitan Opera, the world premiere of his Symphony No. 9 with the Bruckner Orchestra Linz in Austria, a birthday celebration concert with the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, a touring production of his opera Einstein on the Beach with performances in Montpellier, France and at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music, and the world premiere of The Perfect American, a new opera about the death of Walt Disney, in January 2013.

Part palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory fills a critical void in the cultural ecology of New York by enabling artists to create, and the public to experience, unconventional work that could not otherwise be mounted in traditional performance halls and museums. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall- reminiscent of 19th-century European train stations-and array of exuberant period rooms, the Armory invites artists to draw upon its grand scale and distinctive character to both inspire and inform their work. The Armory is currently undergoing a $200-million revitalization of its historic building, named among the "100 Most Endangered Historic Sites in the World" by the World Monuments Fund in 2000. The renovation and restoration, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, will stabilize and preserve the building and create new resources and spaces for exhibitions, installations, and performances, as well as Artist-in-Residence studios, rehearsal rooms, and back-of-house amenities-offering dynamic environments for artists and audiences alike.

Since its first production in September 2007-AaRon Young's Greeting Card, a 9,216-square-foot "action" painting created by the burned-out tire marks of ten choreographed motorcycles presented with Art Production Fund-the Armory has organized a series of immersive performances, installations, and works of art that have drawn critical and popular attention. 2011 marked the Armory's first full season of artistic programming, which culminates this November and December with site-specific performances by STREB and Shen Wei Dance Arts, and the final performances of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.