The Score | Albany Symphony’s Floating Erie Canal Celebration

Three hundred years ago, on July 17, 1717, Handel’s Water Music was first performed on the Thames River in London. A century later on the opposite side of the Atlantic Ocean, construction began on the Erie Canal, a dual anniversary that the Albany Symphony observed by performing selections from Handel’s Water Music this July in communities along the canal as part of Water Music NY, New York State’s Erie Canal bicentennial celebration. The orchestra and Music Director David Alan Miller went beyond Handel, though: each barge or canalside concert featured American favorites plus works by emerging composers who had spent time in their host communities. The first concert, in Albany on July 2, featured a new piece, Canal Songs, by Daniel Schlosberg, and then the orchestra headed west along the canal for concerts through July 8 featuring works by Annika Socolofsky (Schenectady), Angelica Negrón (Amsterdam), Benjamin Wallace (Little Falls), Ryan Chase (Baldwinsville), Loren Loiacono (Brockport), and David Mallamud (Lockport).