Canal-Inspired Compositions

Story by Mathilde Refloch

Photos by Ike Wood

The Erie Canal has found its way into scores of books, popular songs and movies over the past two centuries. 

In the past year, a diverse group of classical composers have added to that repertory, drawing inspiration from this storied past to commemorate the waterway’s 200th anniversary for the Albany Symphony’s Water Music NY: More Voices Festival.

Charged with amplifying minority voices and their significance to the Erie Canal’s history and culture, the musicians arranged compositions with themes that ranged from the “freedom pathways” for enslaved people along the Erie Canal and other waterways to a Haudenosaunee refuge that was plowed to make way for the Canal.

Dai Wei’s “Canton Tea Man’s Tale” shared the story of Oong Ar-Showe, the first Chinese person naturalized in the United States and a tea merchant who navigated the canals of 19th-century America.

Incorporating various stringed instruments and a computer as well as her own voice, Wei’s performance of this piece — staged in a powerhouse in Waterloo in November 2024 — fused historical tea-shop advertisements with musical storytelling to provoke questions about belonging and cultural identity.

Wei said she was fascinated by Ar-Showe’s motivations to venture to a new place where he didn’t share the culture or language with others. 

“He has to start his business and find his way to survive in this land and also thrive,” Wei said. “I think that resonates a lot with me.”

Wei said she could relate to Ar-Showe’s story, as she has spent the past decade in the United States, far from her family and friends in China. She is pursuing a doctorate in musical composition at Princeton University and has applied for a green card to become a permanent U.S. resident.

“I started to create connections with different groups of people, their culture, their story, their musical background, and take energy from this country to create my own music,” she said. “It’s my personal way of exploring self-identity and cultural exchange in a foreign land after 10 or 12 years.”

For fellow Water Music composers Francisco del Pino, Clarice Assad and Juhi Bansal, nature served as both a setting and a subject. Bansal’s piece, “The Refuge,” was performed in November at the Montezuma Audubon Center, a restored wetland along a major migratory bird path west of Syracuse that was once home to the Haudenosaunee people. 

Inside the small center, where preserved birds hang from the ceiling, the Albany Symphony brought Bansal’s music to life as Britt Hewitt and Devony Smith sang the lyrics “Air and water a refuge, Wetlands, shore-ground reserved apart, The grounds a witness and land and water, witness … East, West, South, North shall be a refuge.”

The piece paid tribute to the Montezuma Wetlands Complex, a centuries-old sanctuary drained in the 1800s to construct the Erie Canal and restored as a protected habitat in 1938.

“It’s really much more about the beauty of the natural world here and of the idea of this place being such a refuge,” said Albany Symphony musical director David Alan Miller, who conducted the five concerts in the 2024 series between September and November.

Miller said he strived to keep the composers’ ideas and subjects at the forefront of each performance, with an eye toward broadening the narrative — “from the usual perspective we read in the history books of the white men conquering the wilderness, the white European men coming and building this great industrial thing.

“I love being able to work with living composers,” he said. “They can tell stories of our time and place that are highly relevant to who we are and what we represent.”

Water Music NY recently announced its 2025 bicentennial concerts for June 4-8 in Albany and Troy as part of the American Music Festival. The world premiere of Bobby Ge’s “Water Music” is among the confirmed works.