Purchase individual tickets or upgrade your experience to attend the Summer Soiree (concert ticket included), your Albany Symphony's signature fundraiser, to celebrate together with orchestra musicians, composers, and featured artists!
Dogs of Desire: Summer Soiree
David Alan Miller, conductor
SANDBOX PERCUSSION
The concert
Dogs of Desire, the orchestra’s electrifying, genre-bending new music group, presents newly penned works by some of today’s most adventurous American composers. Be part of the “wild and wonderful world” created by the Albany Symphony’s very own Dogs of Desire (The Daily Gazette)!
General admission seating. Concert duration is 1.5 hours.
The Program
VIET CUONG: Re(new)al
LUKE HAAKSMA : Broadcasts from the Bubble
BEN MORRIS: Life Springs Blue
JACK FRERER: Arrangements of pop songs & American classics
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Viet Cuong
Described as “alluring” and “stirring” by The New York Times, the music of Vietnamese-American composer Viet Cuong has been performed on six continents by musicians and ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Eighth Blackbird, Sandbox Percussion, Kronos Quartet, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Dallas Winds, among many others. Cuong’s music has been heard at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and Lincoln Center, as well as on NPR Music’s Tiny Desk and PBS NewsHour, and his works for wind ensemble have garnered over a thousand performances worldwide. In his music, Cuong also enjoys exploring the unexpected and whimsical, and he is often drawn to projects where he can make peculiar combinations and sounds feel enchanting or oddly satisfying. His works thus include concerti for tuba and dueling oboes, percussion quartets utilizing wine glasses and sandpaper, and pieces for double reed sextet, cello octet, and solo snare drum. This eclecticism extends to the variety of musical groups he writes for, and he has worked closely with ensembles ranging from middle school bands to Grammy-winning orchestras and chamber ensembles. He is currently the Pacific Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence and serves as Assistant Professor of Music Composition at The University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Cuong holds degrees from Princeton University (MFA/PhD), the Curtis Institute of Music (AD), and Peabody Conservatory (BM/MM).
LUKE HAAKSMA
Luke Haaksma is a composer, filmmaker, and performer currently based in the Hudson Valley of New York and originally from Asheville, NC. His work often focuses on non-human states of consciousness, finding influences in themes of anthropomorphization, murder ballads, and folk-horror. Recent projects have also explored themes of digital degradation and the exploitations of Silicon Valley. Haaksma has had the opportunity to work with ensembles such as No Exit, Eighth Blackbird, Yale Percussion Group, AREPO, The Orchestra Now, Yale Philharmonia, among others. He has received recognition such as the BMI Young Composer award, the ASCAP Morton Gould award, and the Charles Ives scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Haaksma previously studied composition and film at Bard College and Conservatory and completed graduate study in composition at Yale School of Music. Recent projects include swannanoa, a piece for string orchestra which explores the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene through sound, and Appaloopchia, a work for 24 voices that features quite a bit of yodeling.
BEN MORRIS
Dr. Ben Morris is a composer and jazz pianist whose music crosses genre boundaries and tells unconventional stories that often engage with the natural world. His music has been described as "witty" (Wall Street Journal), “heart-touching” (OperaGene), "fresh" (All About Jazz), and "wonderfully inventive" (Tom Cipullo). He earned his bachelor's degree at University of Miami, master's degree at Rice University, and Doctor of Musical Arts at University of Colorado Boulder, all in music composition. Morris's creative work and research is often inspired by his Norwegian heritage. He lived in Oslo, Norway, on a Fulbright Grant composing a work for extended big band and video and received an American-Scandinavian Foundation Grant to research the influence of folk music on Norwegian jazz. His debut album, "Pocket Guides," was released in June 2022 on Origin/OA2 Records and takes elements from Norwegian folk music, jazz and contemporary chamber music. The album garnered him two Downbeat Awards, an ASCAP Herb Alpert Award, a big band commission from New York Youth Symphony's First Music and an invitation to perform with his quintet at Newport Jazz Festival. Also a versatile film, theatre, and opera composer, Morris scored the documentary films "American River," which premiered at Montclair Film in 2021, and "Saving the Great Swamp: The Battle to Defeat the Jetport," which won best documentary at the 2017 New Jersey Film Festival. His projects with his librettist collaborator Laura Fuentes include Las Auténticas for the Washington National Opera American Opera Initiative, The Fall of Man and Other Tales, a multimedia work for the ATLAS B2 Black Box, Colorado Sky, a shadow puppet opera in collaboration with Sohap Ensemble, and The Rip Van Winkles, a youth opera commissioned by The Glimmerglass Festival.
Morris writes for unique ensembles that blur established genre expectations. He has collaborated with the American Composers Orchestra, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Loop38, Albany Symphony’s Dogs of Desire, unassisted fold, NOW Ensemble, Unheard-of//Ensemble, Imani Winds, ~Nois, The Living Earth Show, Playground Ensemble, and the NDR Big Band. His compositions and arrangements have been performed by Terrance Blanchard, Joe Lovano, Ingrid Jensen, Vincent Gardner, The Bacon Brothers, and Toronto, Boston, BBC, Nashville, San Diego, and St. Louis Symphonies. He has been a composer fellow at music festivals and workshops including the Aspen Music Festival, the American Composers Orchestra Jazz Composers Institute, Red Note Festival, Sibelius Academy Creative Dialogue, New Music on the Point, the International Gugak Workshop in South Korea, highScore, Source Song Festival, and the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival, and his concert music has received accolades including an ASCAP Morton Gould Award and the International Society of Bassists Composition Contest Grand Prize.
Morris has attended artist residencies at Yaddo, Helene Wurlitzer, I-Park, Brush Creek, Soaring Gardens, Visby, and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center.
His works are published by Alias Press, an affiliated publisher of Theodore Presser. Outside of composing and teaching, Ben enjoys traveling, hiking, reading, model railroading, and exploring museums with his partner, pianist Maggie Hinchliffe.
Albany Symphony’s Summer Soiree
Join other orchestra enthusiasts to support your Albany Symphony at the Summer Soiree, the Albany Symphony's annual fundraising event.
The evening will begin with a cocktail hour followed by the Dogs of Desire concert. Afterward, dinner and drinks will be held alongside orchestra musicians, composers, and featured artists. Guests will also participate in silent and live auctions, a Fund-a-Need paddle raise, and Standing Ovation Awards.
Saturday, June 5, 2026 | EMPAC
5:00pm Cocktails
6:00pm Dogs of Desire Concert
7:35pm Dinner at Studio 1 inside of EMPAC
8:30pm Special Program and Remarks
9:00pm Drinks & Dessert
10:00pm Event concludes
*Dogs of Desire concert tickets are included with Summer Soiree Full Event tickets and do not have to be purchased separately.
Contact Paroma Lahiri at paromal@albanysymphony.com or (518) 465-4755 ext. 145 with questions.
PARKING & ACCESSIBILITY INFORMATION
Parking: The main entrance and box office are located on the east (campus) side of the building. FREE parking is available in the College avenue parking garage adjacent to Cogswell Laboratory.
All parking is FREE on nights and weekends in the City of Troy. PLEASE NOTE: There is no elevator access to the Concert Hall from the 8th Avenue entrance.
GPS Address for Parking Garage: 67 College Ave, Troy, NY 12180
Accessibility: Large-print programs and assistive listening devices available upon request, find an usher or staff member for more information.