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The orchestra is calling it the NY Phil Biennial.

Disclosed on Wednesday as part of the orchestra's announcement of 2013-14 programing, the biennial will be a 10-day festival that Philharmonic officials describe as a "veritable playground of new and recent music from around the world."

The project extends the orchestra's efforts to program more contemporary music and seize some sort of initiative in the search for more relevance and newer audiences. Under its music director, Alan Gilbert, the Philharmonic has already established a modest new-music series in smaller concert halls and has installed composers and artists in residence.

The 2014 festival will run from May 29 to June 7 and include two programs by the orchestra, several programs of chamber music by Philharmonic musicians and performances by the Orchestra of St. Luke's and Juilliard School musicians. The organizers hope to add symposiums and other public events.

The Philharmonic said it had reached agreements with several New York institutions to collaborate on paying for, planning or serving as host for the concerts, including the 92nd Street Y, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Juilliard and the Special Music School at the Kaufman Center. While plans remain vague, as many as three events a day could be on the agenda, Mr. Gilbert said in an interview.

Orchestra officials acknowledged that the NY Phil Biennial may not attract the tens of thousands of visitors who pour into the art fairs in both Basel and Miami Beach or produce the vast display of culture in the pavilions of Venice.

"It's obviously not going to be exhaustive," Mr. Gilbert said. "It's obviously not going to go over every point of view." But for a "contained period of time," he added, audience members can "get a glimpse of what we feel has been exciting in the recent past."

The goal is to present works that have never been performed, or at least never in New York (which for some people amounts to the same thing).

"We want it to be a reaction to, and a reflection of, exciting composition that is happening around the world," Mr. Gilbert said. The orchestra chose the word "biennial," he said, to imply that the festival was permanent and to convey the feel of a broad international survey. "We want to provide for music a nexus and rallying point that the great biennials in the art world have become," Mr. Gilbert said.

Details are scarce because programmers want to have the flexibility of making last-minute decisions, Mr. Gilbert added, although they may have been too busy planning the orchestra's season, which opens on Sept. 25 with a gala concert featuring Osvaldo Golijov's "Azul" for cello and orchestra and an arrangement of Astor Piazzolla's "Serie del Ángel," with Yo-Yo Ma as soloist.

Other highlights of the season include performances of all five Beethoven piano concertos, with Yefim Bronfman as soloist; a number of works by Christopher Rouse, the Philharmonic's composer in residence; performances featuring Glenn Dicterow, the concertmaster, who will be in his last season; an Asian tour; a program of music and clips from Pixar movies; and a showing of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" with the orchestra playing the film score live.

The "2001" performance will be a rare case in which the Philharmonic's lack of playing is being cast as a virtue. Silence is a key part of the movie, so the orchestra will stay onstage the whole time, the Philharmonic said, "highlighting Kubrick's strategic and eloquent use of both music and silence in storytelling."

The orchestra will dedicate two of its subscription concerts to the biennial, said Ed Yim, the vice president for artistic planning. The first will be a collaboration with the Juilliard Orchestra, works to be determined. The second will be the first performances of Mr. Rouse's Symphony No. 4, a Philharmonic commission.

The orchestra is expanding its new-music series, Contact!, to include three concerts at the 92nd Street Y's TriBeCa performance space, Mr. Yim said. One of those TriBeCa concerts will be included under the biennial umbrella.