Adventurous listening awaits for all those who attend the Albany Symphony Orchestra’s annual American Music Festival, which opens Wednesday and runs through Sunday, June 8, in various locations in Albany and Troy.

“[These are] fresh, out-of-the-box pieces that you can’t get anywhere else,” said ASO music director David Alan Miller. “It is classical music, but that world has broadened so much that the term classical music is not relevant. Even what is an orchestra has broadened.”

Miller points to the opening concert at 5 p.m. at Albany’s Jennings Landing that will feature the debut of Chicago’s Grammy Award-winning percussion quartet Third Coast Percussion in a solo performance. Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and David Skidmore will be bringing, among other instruments, a marimba; a collection of drums such as tom-tom and bongo; gongs from Thailand; and “home” instruments such as metal bowls.

“It will be about an hour with pieces about five to 10 minutes long,” Skidmore said. “All the pieces except for the Steve Reich piece were written for us.”

Founded in 2005, the group has traveled the world, often stopping in local bazaars or instrument shops to find instruments they couldn’t find anywhere else or that simply intrigued them.

“We collect sounds wherever we go,” Skidmore said. “We just picked up three gongs in Taiwan and found some tamboras, which are like a tambourine, in Nepal.”

Many of those new instruments are part of the nearly 125 pieces that composers have written for the group. But Skidmore said that although the group was founded to explore the new and the contemporary, and usually works closely with living composers, “We still love the wonderful older work of the 1970s and ’80s.”

The quartet’s members have all been classically trained, he said, but a percussion player’s career can be different than other instrumentalists.

“What is special about percussion is that it’s not just one instrument. Any object can be made into an instrument. There’s an incredible variety of sound, and audiences connect to these familiar objects,” Skidmore said. “And it takes a long time to get that right patter — it’s a lifelong pursuit, plus mastering new instruments. It never runs out.”

ASO will have an open rehearsal at RPI’s Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) Thursday at 7 p.m. Miller and his 18-piece ensemble, the Dogs of Desire, along with “spectacular singers” soprano Britt Hewitt and mezzo-soprano Devony Smith, will be at EMPAC at 6 p.m. Friday.

“We’ll have four great world premieres with composers we’ve never worked with and one work by Francisco del Pino that I wanted to encore,” Miller said. “The group is a tight chamber orchestra set to explore the world of pop culture.”

The concert is scheduled so early because there’s a summer soiree immediately following it. The soiree, which is part of ASO’s fundraising campaign, includes dinner, drinks and a silent auction.

At 11 a.m. Saturday there will be a chamber music concert of “pop-up pieces” at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at 58 Third St. in Troy. That night at 7:30 p.m. at EMPAC is the final big orchestra concert. A preconcert chat will begin at 6:30 p.m. Pieces will include the world premiere of Bobby Ge’s “Beyond Anthropocene,” which Miller said was a virtuosic tour-de-force about the environment. Third Coast Percussion will then take the stage along with composer Clarice Assad for her concerto “Play!”

“It’s super fun to play,” Skidmore said. “We’ll use marimba, vibes and glockenspiel, and toys for noisemaking. Clarice narrates in the first movement and sings on the second. The third is virtuosic and a fast showoff for us.”

ASO will also perform Sophia Jani’s “What Do Flowers Do At Night,” which is a beautiful tone poem, Miller said. The concert will close with Christopher Theofanidis’s gorgeous “Indigo Heaven” clarinet concerto, with Chicago Symphony Orchestra principal clarinetist Stephen Williamson performing the work written for him.

On Sunday at 4 p.m. at Bush Memorial Hall at Russell Sage College in Troy, 10 new composers will get the chance to hear their pieces rehearsed, performed, then recorded. They are part of a class that Theofanidis has held each festival. Miller said there were 56 applicants and eight auditors, with 12 invited. Of those, 10 had pieces ready to be analyzed.

But ASO’s season is not over. In July, members of the orchestra will travel across the route of the Erie Canal to give five concerts as part of the Water Music NY: More Voices series that celebrates the canal’s bicentennial.

“It’s our own thing and full of wonderful opportunities,” Miller said.

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