Albany Symphony Orchestra

This Albany Symphony program is called An Evening With John Harbison & Friends. Harbison (pictured) is one of the leading American composers—he wrote the acclaimed opera based on The Great Gatsby—and his collaboration (title: “composer-mentor” to the orchestra) is yet another feather in the cap of the ASO and maestro David Alan Miller. The ASO will perform Harbison’s Symphony No. 4, a work of particular personal- emotional import to the composer.

Also on the bill is the world premiere of Timothy Andrews’ Look Around You, featuring violinist/violist Owen Dalby; Copland’s Music for the Theatre; and Haydn’s Symphony No. 82 (“The Bear”). We will endorse any piece of music that has “the bear” as its nickname, by the way.

Albany Symphony Orchestra, with guest Owen Dalby, will perform tomorrow (Friday, March 26) at 8 PM at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall (2nd and State streets, Troy). Tickets are $25 to $49, with $15 student tickets available. For more info, call 273-0038.

Coheed and Cambria

At this point in our story, the Amory Wars have befallen Heaven’s Fence—that collection of planets held together by the celestial energy known as the Keywork—and the rebel forces, led by Jesse the Prize Fighter Inferno, are closing in on Wilhelm Ryan, the evil Supreme Tri-Mage of the Keywork. Coheed and Cambria Kilgannon are dead, and it’s up to their son Claudio, who just came to terms with his fate as the messianic Crowning, to destroy Heaven’s Fence and liberate the Keywork.

On April 13, the story continues when New York rock band Coheed and Cambria release Year of the Black Rainbow, a prequel to their four-part concept album series following the Amory Wars, a saga created by guitarist Claudio Sanchez, accompanied by a line of comic books. This time, though, Sanchez has upped the conceptual ante, penning a novel to accompany the album.

Tonight, the band will bring selections from the series to Northern Lights, where they will be joined by Brooklyn garage-soul band Earl Greyhound. Unfortunately, unless you have tickets already, you’re out of luck: It’s a sellout.

Coheed and Cambria come to Northern Lights (1208 Route 146, Clifton Park) tonight (Thursday, March 25) at 8 PM. Tickets are $25. Call 371-0012 for more info.

Music of Helmut Lachenmann

So the topic of this week’s arts feature, Upending, isn’t the only “happening” at EMPAC this week. On Saturday, two renowned, cutting-edge chamber ensembles will perform a program of works by one of Europe’s musical lions, Helmut Lachenmann.

Lachenmann works on the experimental edge of the spectrum, of course: He uses an “iconoclastic vocabulary of instrumental sounds” to create “imaginary timbres.” To wit: “Imagine a string quartet able to sound like a forest floor, the murmurs of a crowd, or the loose strings of a broken banjo.”

The performers will include the Signal Ensemble, cellist Lauren Radnofsky, the JACK Quartet, and composer Lachenmann himself, as pianist and “speaking soloist.”

Music of Helmut Lachenmann will be presented Saturday (March 27) at 8 PM at EMPAC (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy). Tickets are $15, $10, $5. For more info, call 276-4135.