Flaming Lips and friends play for a cause

The Flaming Lips are playing the 25th annual Tibet House US benefit concert at New York's Carnegie Hall on Thursday, but don't count on close pal Miley Cyrus to crash the party.

"There's a sense of, if you're famous enough, people think you can just walk in there and do whatever you want. But she's not really like that," Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne says. "Just to walk in like, 'I'm Miley Cyrus' — it wouldn't be something we'd just do without having worked something out."

But with the top-shelf talent already slated to play the concert, a surprise performance from Cyrus would merely be icing on the cake. Aside from the Flaming Lips, Debbie Harry, Laurie Anderson, Patti Smith and Her Band (with Jesse Paris Smith), Sturgill Simpson and Ira Glass are all set to appear at the charity event. Proceeds benefit the non-profit Tibet House US, an educational institution founded in New York in 1987 that works to promote and preserve Tibetan culture and heritage, but also supports other causes throughout the year.

Since its inception 29 years ago — with its first four concerts held at venues around the city, before the move to Carnegie Hall — the Tibet House concert has played host to the likes of the late Lou Reed, Sheryl Crow, Paul Simon, Sigur Ros and Iggy Pop, among others. Aside from supporting a cause, the benefit stands out for its unexpected, star-studded collaborations, from David Bowie's first performance of Silly Boy Blue in 30 years in 2001, backed by a band including Moby, to a rendition of the Flaming Lips' Do You Realize with famed composer Philip Glass in 2011.

"The feeling of collaboration is very evident," says Glass, the event's curator and artistic director. "The common language of modern music is that we can sit down and play with each other, and we're not so sequestered away from each other like we used to be. A country person can play with a blues person, and it gives them a chance to open up in a way."

This year, Coyne plans to bring Julianna Barwick to the stage for a performance of the Beatles' She's Leaving Home, featured on the Flaming Lips' With a Little Help from My Fwends tribute album to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released last fall. He may also reunite with Glass for a reinterpretation of Bowie's Warszawa.

"It seems like he's not even like a real person. He's this iconic character, Philip Glass," Coyne says. "You're right there with him, and he's asking you the chords to what you thought was a simple song, and he's working his magic on them. It's pretty crazy."