(gentle music) - We're really trying to shine a light on these amazing historic and cultural artifacts, but also on the immediacy and the beauty of the canal and all this water that runs through our lands, our places.

- It was a late, stark, and rainy night.

A solitary figure hunches over a desk.

A composer, surrounded by silence, grappling with an unusual theme for a new composition.

- [Speaker] The Erie Canal.

(bright music) - Water Music New York is one of the things that we at the Albany Symphony are most excited about.

Back in 2017, we had had a number of conversations with the New York State Canal Corporation because I happened to know that the beginning of the bicentennial of the Erie Canal was going to be on July 4th, 2017.

That was when the first shovelful was dug in Rome, New York in 1817.

And so we developed this incredible project to float the orchestra essentially down the canal from Albany to Buffalo over a week around the July 4th holiday, celebrating the bicentennial, the kickoff of the bicentennial.

And so we began conversations a couple years ago with the Canal Corporation and the Power Authority, and they very much wanted us to come back and do a sort of similar thing, but we and they very much wanted to make it a little bit different.

We call it now "Water Music New York: More Voices."

The idea being that there are so many stakeholders and historical figures and populations whose voices and whose stories really haven't been heard or haven't been told.

So we're really focusing particularly on the stories and the voices of women, immigrants, people of color, indigenous Americans who obviously occupied this land long before the canal was built.

And the voice of the environment, of nature.

We're doing these five little really fascinating pop-up events, one of which is right here in Schoharie Crossing Park.

(gentle music) - This is a very beautiful and unusual place.

It's where you can see all three versions of the canal, but it's called the crossing because of that beautiful aqueduct behind me that was built in 1841.

I can't think of a more peaceful setting to be able to sit here and to reflect and to imagine what it was like when the canal was going at full bore, both in 1825, but later in the 1860s and the 1870s when literally hundreds of boats were going across the aqueduct.

And to have it set to music is just a beautiful thing.

So I'm really looking forward to enjoying the evening.

(gentle music) ♪ I speak with grace to you ♪ ♪ My water ♪ ♪ Flowing from mountains high ♪ ♪ To valleys low ♪ ♪ Carrying my spirit's flow ♪ - My name is Clarice Assad, and I'm a composer and performer originally from Brazil.

Today, we are premiering a piece that I wrote called "Earth and Water."

And the idea for this piece came from a conversation I had with Kay Olen, and she is a member of the Mohawk Nation, and she told me something so beautiful.

She said that the oldest spirit that they believe in and they care for is Mother Earth, right?

And she also said that water was Mother Earth's blood.

So this piece is a composition that it's a conversation between earth and water, earth being worried about everything that's happening to them, right?

Manmade structures, things like that.

And there are introductions where I am the composer.

So you literally see like where I stopped my train of thought, and there's narration.

It's like, from here on you continue.

And I have an idea and I feel, so it's like as if I was writing the piece in real time.

(gentle music) - Right then, the composer paused, taking a long breath and letting the air flow into the lungs, carrying oxygen to every cell.

Silently, thanks were given to all plants, the phytoplankton, the atmosphere.

- And of course the earth itself.

- This is a very important program.

And with the support that we're having from local communities, right?

We're coming together to make this happen.

I think this is fantastic.

We are building a strong community for people to have their pieces heard, for the audience to listen to new works that they haven't listened.

So I think it's a very important thing.

We need that more in the world.

(gentle music) ♪ Whose dreams ♪ ♪ The humans who inhabit this place ♪ ♪ Why the worry ♪ ♪ Other canals have been built millennia ago ♪ ♪ What sets this one apart ♪ - These popups are a little different from what we normally do in that they're for fairly small ensembles, quartet, quintet, four or five musicians plus singers, plus speaker, et cetera.

But it's the same exercise as bringing the whole orchestra, it's a little more manageable with a smaller group, but it's all about celebrating and connecting to our communities and all the communities around us and who feed this incredible culture that is the capital region in New York state.

So we feel this is like the most important and the most exciting and original work we do.

(audience applauding) (gentle music)