Dogs of Desire: "Best Of" Commemorative Concert
David Alan Miller, conductor
SANDBOX PERCUSSION
The concert
A concert showcasing the very best from over 200 entertaining works commissioned exclusively for the Dogs of Desire, including Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al.
Founded in 1994, Dogs of Desire has earned a national reputation as an incubator for the most inventive musical creations of our time. 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 2.25 hours with intermission
The Program
VIET CUONG: Re(new)al
CELKA OJAKANGAS: Un Sogno
CAROLYN YARNELL: Dreamer
DANIEL BERNARD ROUMAIN (DBR) : Grace
DANIEL WORLEY: Tongues
KEN EBERHARD: Five Haikus for Daytime Television
EVAN HAUSE: US Lowball
GABRIEL IAN GOULD: Puja
ROSHANNE ETEZADY: Start it up
About the artists
Sandbox Percussion
The “exhilarating” (The New York Times) and “utterly mesmerizing” (The Guardian) GRAMMY®-nominated Sandbox Percussion champions living composers through its unwavering dedication to contemporary chamber music. In 2011, Jonathan Allen, Victor Caccese, Ian Rosenbaum, and Terry Sweeney came together through a mutual interest in expanding the percussion repertoire. Today, they are established leaders in contemporary music for percussion, engaging a wider audience for classical music through collaborations with leading composers and artists.
Sandbox Percussion has toured the world—from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris to the Beijing Music Festival—and has reached mass audiences through NPR’s Tiny Desk, TED Conferences, and film. The group’s 2025 Tiny Desk debut consisted of a genre-defying program of pieces by Andy Akiho and Viet Cuong. In 2024, Sandbox Percussion recorded percussion for the feature film The Wild Robot (DreamWorks), with music by Kris Bowers.
Sandbox Percussion is the first percussion ensemble to receive the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant; at the 2024 ceremony, they performed “Pillar V,” from Seven Pillars, Akiho’s 2021 suite for percussion quartet, which The New York Times called “as pure as music gets.” It was nominated for two GRAMMY® awards and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Building on that success, Sandbox Percussion and Akiho embark on a project in 2025-26 to create a new work with Akiho joining on steelpan; “Pentalateral I,” the first completed movement, is available now as a single. Throughout the season, the quintet continues to create and record the rest of the piece, giving premieres of individual movements in select venues.
Sandbox Percussion also continues to champion Re(new)al, Cuong’s green energy and environment-themed 2017 concerto for percussion quartet (the world premiere recording is available on Albany Records). They reunite for the world premiere of a new work by Cuong to be performed with the Albany Symphony, which commissioned and premiered Re(new)al.
Another season highlight is the collaboration with violinist Kristin Lee, the founder and artistic director of Seattle’s Emerald City Music, where Sandbox Percussion is ensemble-in-residence this season. Together, they present a Vivian Fung world premiere, and the Pacific Northwest premiere of recent works by Joan Tower and Gabriella Smith. Lee joins Sandbox Percussion again at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for Sonic Spectrum IV, a program that includes Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra.
Over the season, Sandbox Percussion performs Simeon ten Holt’s minimalist work Canto Ostinato. The group’s arrangement for percussion quartet and two pianos was performed at Lincoln Center Summer for the City. A recording—a collaboration with Erik Hall and Metropolis Ensemble—was released in April 2026. At Duke University, Sandbox Percussion and the
Tyshawn Sorey Trio present Max Roach at 100, a tribute to the influential jazz drummer. At Stanford Live, Sandbox Percussion joins the choir The Crossing for You Are Who I Love, the last work by the late Harold Meltzer, set to Aracelis Girmay’s poem about the undocumented immigrant experience in the U.S.
The group’s latest album is Don’t Look Down (PENTATONE, 2025), featuring music by Christopher Cerrone. It won the 2026 GRAMMY® Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical (engineers Mike Tierney and Alan Silverman). Other recent releases include BLOOM, with music by Michael Torke (Ecstatic Records, 2024); and Past Life / Lifeline, with music by Ellis Ludwig-Leone (Better Company Records, 2024).
Sandbox Percussion holds the positions of ensemble-in-residence and percussion faculty at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and The New School’s College of Performing Arts, where they have created a curriculum with entrepreneurship and chamber music at its core. The 2025-26 season is the group’s second year on faculty at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. Sandbox Percussion endorses Pearl/Adams musical instruments, Zildjian cymbals, Vic Firth sticks and mallets, Remo drumheads, and Black Swamp accessories.
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).
Celka Ojakangas
Celka Ojakangas is a Los Angeles-based composer originally from southwest Missouri whose “work rates high on the bold and beautiful scales” and “takes molecular musical quirks and explodes them, then seizes precious moments of lyricism.” (Columbia Tribune) Her music plays with hybridism and recontextualization, intentionally exploring and blurring the boundaries between culturally-defined genres for a resultant fun and eclectic palette of textures, rhythms, and grooves. Celka gleans her musical ideas from her collaborative work as a violist in symphonies, new music ensembles, jazz bands, and rock bands, always with the intention of bringing creativity and play to the forefront of the listener’s and performer’s experiences.
Celka’s compositions have been premiered and commissioned by many artists including Martin Chalifour with the LA Philharmonic, Alarm Will Sound, Dogs of Desire, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Music from Copland House, Hub New Music, the New England Conservatory Philharmonia, the Raleigh Symphony, Portland State University Opera, Blackhouse Collective, Bantam Winds, the Thornton Symphony Orchestra, and the Thornton Wind Ensemble. Recent distinctions include the Goddard Leiberson Fellowship from American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2025 Aspen Music Festival Jacob Druckman Prize, a premiere with the LA Phil’s Chamber Music Series, the Gunther Schuller Centennial Third Stream Composition Contest prize, the CULTIVATE Copland House Emerging Composer’s Fellowship, Bang on a Can Summer Festival Composer’s Fellowship, the Mizzou International Composer Festival Composer’s Residency, the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Award, Opera America’s Discovery Grant for Female Composers, and the American Prize for Wind Band. Active both as a composer and performer, Celka has also collaborated with musicians at Blackhouse New Music Workshops, the Oh My Ears! Festival, and the Oregon Bach Festival Composers’ Symposium.
Celka has a DMA in Composition from the University of Southern California. Former mentors include Donald Crockett, Andrew Norman, Ted Hearne, Sean Friar, Frank Ticheli, Mara Gibson and Carlyle Sharpe. She currently serves as a Visiting Professor of Music at Occidental College and Glendale Community College.
Carolyn Yarnell
Carolyn Yarnell is an internationally acclaimed composer, visual artist, and writer whose work transcends traditional boundaries, uniting music, painting, and multimedia into deeply immersive artistic experiences. Renowned for her evocative and visionary voice, she explores themes of nature, spirituality, the cosmos, and the human spirit, creating works that resonate on both intimate and universal scales.
She is the recipient of some of the most prestigious honors in the arts, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Iceland. Uniquely, Yarnell has been awarded dual Individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in both Music Composition and Oil Painting—an extraordinary recognition of her multidisciplinary mastery. Her groundbreaking contributions have also been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters with the Charles Ives Scholarship, and she has held residencies at leading institutions such as MacDowell, Yaddo, Tanglewood, Banff, Aspen, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Montalvo Arts Center, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, among others.
A graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Yale University, Yarnell has built a body of work spanning orchestral, chamber, choral, and solo compositions, alongside electronic and ambient soundscapes. Her music has been performed by leading ensembles and musicians across the United States, Europe, and Asia, reflecting both a deep reverence for classical traditions and a fearless embrace of contemporary experimentation. Among her many commissions and residencies, she served as MUSICALIVE Composer-in-Residence with conductor David Alan Miller and the Albany Symphony, a three-year national program of the League of American Orchestras and Meet the Composer.
Beyond composition, Yarnell is an accomplished visual artist and curator. Her paintings often intertwine with her musical creations, producing strikingly synesthetic narratives that invite audiences into transformative spaces where sound and sight converge. From 2016 to 2018, she served as Exhibitions Director at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, curating innovative shows such as Rome Revisited, Music for Your Eyes, and The Time Returns, a tribute to Egyptian artist Ashraf ElHady. She has also collaborated extensively with celebrated visual artist Joyce Kozloff and exhibits regularly in California and New York.
Yarnell is a founding member of the Common Sense Composers’ Collective, a San Francisco/New York-based group dedicated to creating and championing new music. Her career is distinguished not only by the breadth of her achievements but also by the depth of her vision—bringing together sound, image, and word in works that offer profound meditations on the natural world and the human condition.
With every project, Carolyn Yarnell expands the possibilities of artistic expression. Her work stands as a testament to the power of creativity to inspire, challenge, and transform.
DANIEL BERNARD ROUMAIN (DBR)
Known for his signature violin sounds infused with myriad electronic and African-American music influences, Roumain takes his genre-bending music beyond the proscenium. He is a composer of solo, chamber, orchestral, and operatic works, and has composed an array of film, theater, and dance scores. He has composed music for the acclaimed film Ailey (Sundance official selection); was the first Music Director and Principal Composer with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company; released and appeared on 30 album recordings; and has published over 300 works. He has appeared on CBS, ESPN, FOX, NBC, NPR, and PBS; and has been presented and collaborated with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Kennedy Center, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Sydney Opera House. He was Artist-in-Residence and Creative Chair at the Flynn in Burlington, Vermont. Currently, he is the first Artistic Ambassador with Firstworks; the first Artist Activist-in-Residence at Longy School of Music; and the first Resident Artistic Catalyst with the New Jersey Symphony.
Roumain is an Atlantic Center Master Artist, a Creative Capital Grantee, and a Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow. He has won the American Academy in Rome Goddard Lieberson Fellowship; a Civitella Ranieri Music Fellowship Award; two regional Emmy Awards for The New Look of Classical Music: Boston Pops Orchestra and Art is Essential: New Jersey Symphony; National Sawdust Disruptor Award; and the Sphinx Organization Arthur L. Johnson Award. He has been featured as a keynote speaker at universities, colleges, conservatories and technology conferences, and was the first ASU GAMMAGE Residency Artist. He has lectured at Yale and Princeton University and was a Roth Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College. He currently serves as a board member for the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (Vice Chair), the League of American Orchestras, and is a voting member for the Recording Academy GRAMMY awards.
A student of William Albright, Leslie Bassett, and William Bolcom, Roumain graduated from Vanderbilt University and earned his doctorate in music composition from the University of Michigan. He is currently a tenured Associate and Institute Professor at Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.
DANIEL Worley
A native of Louisville Kentucky, Daniel has a D.M.A. in Music Composition from the University of Michigan and a B.M. in Theory/Composition (Guitar emphasis) from the University of Louisville. He’s received commissions from the Albany Symphony, Tulsa Philharmonic, SEAMUS/ASCAP, and saxophonist Timothy McAllister among others. His dissertation, Freak Show, was the first concept album accepted as a dissertation by a major composition program. In the last 20 or so years Daniel has: built and run two recording studios; produced, recorded and/or mastered more albums than he can remember, including records from his roots-rock band CityGoat, the experimental improvisation ensemble, the Trace Trio, Midnight Sun, Morning Moon and Lazy Afternoon with vocalist Jennifer Diamond and saxophonist Dave Clark, High Crimes and Protection? by Louisville afrobeat sensations The Afrophysicists; taught composition, electronic music, orchestration, counterpoint, guitar, music production, and the History of Rock and Roll, at UofM, UofL, Centre College, and Bellarmine University. In Fall 2025 Daniel will be the director of CentreJazz ensemble at Centre College. He is currently performing as often as possible as a guitarist and/or singer-songwriter, with jam-band 4th Street Station, as part of the Diamond/Worley/Clark trio, and as the proud 32nd member of The Afrophysicists.
Evan Hause
Evan Hause has composed a rich body of work including orchestral, band, choral, and chamber music, rock albums, serious and light operas, and electro-acoustic music. A skilled performer himself, he has performed as a percussionist, guitarist, keyboardist, bassist, and vocalist and has conducted numerous works of his own (including three operas) and other composers. His musical influences were strongly shaped by early performing experiences in rock bands, symphony orchestras, and avante garde percussion and contemporary music ensembles.
His music has been commissioned by the Albany Symphony, Riverside Symphony (NYC), Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Capitol Saxophone Quartet, Oberlin Percussion Group, Carolina Chamber Music Festival, University of Michigan Symphony Band, pianist Blair McMillen, the Creviston Duo, the Yellow Barn Festival, and Tales&Scales. It has been featured by the Boston, Phoenix, Utah, Louisville, Memphis, Brooklyn and Grand Rapids Symphonies, “Spring in Havana” Electronic Music Festival, Cincinnati Conservatory Orchestra, and bands of the Universities of Florida, Massachusetts, Southern California, North Texas, and East Carolina. Additionally it has been performed in Japan, South Korea, Jordan, Mexico, England, France, Italy, Germany, Holland, Thailand, Ireland, Taiwan, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Cuba, Venezuela and Brazil.
Upon moving to New York City in 1999, Hause quickly thrived in the uptown chamber music and downtown free improvisation scene, was music director for a handful of theatrical productions, and helped form the vanguard of the city’s new opera scene by writing and producing three new operas between 2001-2007. He performed as percussionist in several contemporary music ensembles, including the Locrian Chamber Players and SEM Ensemble, and as electric guitarist-arranger in Alarm Will Sound. His music was played at Miller Theater, Alice Tully Hall, and Galapagos, as well as many smaller venues. Most recently he conducted the City of Prague Philharmonic in recordings of two of his works, and released several large-scale, collaborative rock-jazz-pop albums on his own label, EVHA.
Hause received several ASCAP young composer awards; residencies at the Edward Albee ”Barn” on Montauk, MacDowell Colony, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Burren College of Art (Ireland); grants from the Ditson Fund of Columbia University and the Brooklyn Arts Council; the Rackham Regents and Dissertation Fellowships of the University of Michigan; the Herbert Elwell Composer Award of the Oberlin Conservatory; the Sanford Scholarship of the North Carolina School of the Arts; and an Aspen Music Festival scholarship.
Originally from Greenville, North Carolina, Hause is the son of an orchestra conductor and piano teacher. He earned degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory (BM) and University of Michigan (MM, DMA). Teachers included William Bolcom, William Albright, Randolph Coleman, Richard Hoffmann, and Sherwood Shaffer. Prior to moving to New York City he taught theory, composition, and percussion at Pittsburg State University in Kansas. He currently resides in West Orange, New Jersey with his wife, a Rutgers University clarinet professor, and two daughters. For fifteen years he managed the Edward B. Marks Music Company, a prominent classical music publisher, for the Carlin America company.
Gabirel Ian Gould
“I am a composer, pianist, podcaster, and sound designer. I studied composition at the University of Michigan, Bard College, and Simon’s Rock College, and have taught music at Juniata College, Hamilton College, Indiana University South Bend, and the Ithaca College London Center. I am currently a freelance sound designer, audio editor, and composer, and you can hear my work on American Scandal, Tides of History, History Daily, Business Movers, QEZ, and Most Writers Are Fans. Burning the Thrushes, my podcast about sound and listening, is available wherever you get your podcasts. I have composed for orchestra, chamber ensembles, chorus, voices, and, more recently, electroacoustic works that feature field recordings and keyboard improvisations. I have received commissions from Glimmerglass Opera, the Albany Symphony, the Dogs of Desire, and the New York Youth Symphony, among other organizations. I was born in New York City and raised in upstate New York, and now live and work in Central Pennsylvania."
Roshanne Etezady
As a young musician, Roshanne studied piano and flute, and developed an interest in many different styles of music, from the musicals of Steven Sondheim to the 1980's power ballads and Europop of her teenage years. One fateful evening evening in 1986, she saw Philip Glass and his ensemble perform as the musical guests on Saturday Night Live. This event marked the beginning of her interest in contemporary classical music, as well as her interest in being a composer herself.
Since then, Etezady's works have been commissioned by the Albany Symphony, Dartmouth Symphony, eighth blackbird, Music at the Anthology, and the PRISM Saxophone Quartet. She has been a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Performers and ensembles including Rêlache, Amadinda Percussion Ensemble, Ensemble De Ereprijs, and the Dogs of Desire have performed Etezady's music throughout the United States and Europe. Roshanne Etezady's music has earned recognition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Korean Society of 21st Century Music, the Jacob K. Javits Foundation, Meet the Composer, and ASCAP.
An active teacher, Etezady has taught at the Interlochen Arts Camp, Yale University, Saint Mary's College, and the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam. She has given masterclasses at Holy Cross College, the Juilliard School, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.
Etezady holds academic degrees from Northwestern University and Yale University, and she has worked intensively with numerous composers, including William Bolcom, Martin Bresnick, Michael Daugherty, and Ned Rorem. She completed her doctorate at the University of Michigan in March, 2005.
About the Dogs of Desire:
Dedicated to exploring and celebrating the intersection between the raucous terrain of American popular culture, traditional Western instrumental music, and music traditions from around the world, the Albany Symphony’s 18-member new music ensemble, Dogs of Desire, has commissioned and performed more than 200 new works by America’s most exciting emerging composers.
Founded by GRAMMY®-winning conductor David Alan Miller with members of the Albany Symphony in 1994, Dogs of Desire has gained a national reputation as an incubator for the most inventive musical creators of our time, extending to collaborations with filmmakers, choreographers, Ghanian percussionists, Broadway stars, Rock-n-Roll icons, and a robot builder.
The group is featured annually at the Albany Symphony’s American Music Festival, an international hub for new American music, and has performed in New York City, Washington D.C, and throughout New York State. The group’s most recent recording, of Michael Daugherty’s Woody Guthrie homage, “This Land Sings,” was released in May, 2020, on NAXOS Records.
Concert Sponsor:
Karen and Peter* Kermani
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.