Park Avenue Armory Presents Its 2012 Tune-In Music Festival 2/23-26

Park Avenue Armory has announced plans for its second Tune-In Music Festival, to 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.

Comprised of four separate programs over the span of four days, the Tune-In Music Festival will feature Glass's own music, including his definitive work Music in Twelve Parts, as well as music, poetry, and art created and performed by his muses, collaborators, and protégées.

One of the greatest works to emerge from the Beat Generation was Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish, a sprawling, propulsive poem about the poet's estrangement from Judaism. The 2012 Tune-In Music Festival will begin with a world premiere, commissioned by the Park Avenue Armory from jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, to be performed by the composer and an eight-piece ensemble accompanying a reading of Kaddish by Ginsburg collaborator Hal Willner and artist Ralph Steadman, who will create a visual design to accompany the piece.

Longtime Glass collaborator Patti Smith and her band join Glass for the second concert, "The Poet Speaks," performing music and readings celebrating their favorite poets, including Ginsburg and William Blake, which will be the first New York performance for the pair. For the third concert, The Philip Glass Ensemble will offer a rare performance of the entire Music in Twelve Parts, Glass's epic minimalist composition which he considers his "breakthrough" work.

The Festival concludes with Glass's Another Look at Harmony, a 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.