World Music Institute in collaboration with National Sawdust present Philip Glass & Foday Musa Suso

This event, presented by World Music Institute in collaboration with National Sawdust, is one of the highlights of the Glass @ 80 celebrations around the world. Philip Glass and Foday Musa Suso famously collaborated on the album The Screens (composed as music for a production of the play by Jean Genet), the score for the film Powaqqatsi, and on the concert work Orion. At National Sawdust, the two artists will come together again for an intimate and collaborative performance. The show will include two special guests: percussionist Asher Delerme and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler.

Philip Glass is one of America's most celebrated composers and one of the original American minimalists. In the past 25 years, Glass has composed many operas, symphonies, and concertos as well as dozens of soundtracks for films. Over the years, his work has been inspired by the music of Africa, India, and the Himalayas.

Foday Musa Suso is a Mandingo Griot from Gambia who in the 1970's became the first kora player to establish himself in the U.S. He has written many original compositions and collaborated, toured and recorded with artists such as Bill Laswell, Herbie Hancock, Pharaoh Sanders, Paul Simon, Don Cherry, the Kronos Quartet, and many others.

This performance continues World Music Institute's acclaimed Collaborations series, which presents cross-cultural musical explorations. It explores the ways that the music of artists from one culture have influenced the music of another, or the ways in which music of seemingly widely varying cultures can be strikingly similar or complementary.

The Collaborations series debuted in November and December 2016 with two events at National Sawdust: the first-ever juxtaposition of Meredith Monk and Ani Choying Drolma, and a historic Steve Reich celebration with Ghanaian master drummer Gideon Alorwoyie and Mantra Percussion. The Brooklyn Rail hailed the latter as "Something of a new music dream come true...Only the World Music Institute would put on this kind of show."

Sunday, March 12, 2017, 7:00 p.m.

National Sawdust
80 North 6th Street, Brooklyn
Tickets: $50 in advance / $60 at the door
www.worldmusicinstitute.org

Presented in collaboration with National Sawdust