Heart of the City
New orchestral music gives voice to Albany's Washington Park

By Joseph Dalton, Special to the Times Union
First published: Thursday, January 24, 2008

The beauty of Albany's Washington Park the quiet walkways and lush gardens, the lake and the monuments has been inspiring contemplation and celebration for nearly 200 years. Recently, the park inspired a composer to write a new piece of music.

Peter Child's "Washington Park" will receive its world premiere by the Albany Symphony Orchestra on Saturday evening at the Palace Theatre in Albany, in a concert otherwise noteworthy for the presence of a superstar guest, violinist Joshua Bell.

"It's a lovely place," says Child, a resident of Boston. "When I first came to Albany, I had the experience of discovering the city on my own, because I didn't know where anything was. It's amazing to walk around Washington Park and you came across the extraordinary statue of Moses and the lake and the Lake House. I love being there."

A Regular Visitor

Child's relationship with Albany began in 2003, when on just a few months' notice, he composed a new piece for the opening of the ASO season. He has continued to be a regular visitor, serving for the past three years as a composer-in-residence with the orchestra. All of the symphony's guest composers and performers are hosted by the Morgan State House, a bed-and-breakfast located directly across from Washington Park on State Street near Henry Johnson Boulevard.

"Washington Park" is Child's fifth new work written for the ASO, and joins an ever-growing body of Albany-related orchestral works premiered during the tenure of music director David Alan Miller. The list includes Kevin Beavers' two pieces inspired by William Kennedy novels, as well as the many chamber orchestra works written for performance at specific venues like the Capitol building and the Saratoga Battle Field.

There's also Child's own "Adirondack Voices" from 2006, and last year's "Down-Adown-Derry: A Fairy Suite," based on illustrations by Dorothy Lathrop from the collection of the Albany Institute of History & Art.

Sense of Place

All these past Albany-inspired works were the brainchild of Miller, who's always on the lookout for ways to engage audiences with new music. Yet the idea for a piece called "Washington Park" was completely Child's idea. It furthers the conductor's goal of creating orchestral programming with "a sense of place," but also speaks to the value of the long-term relationships with composers that Miller pursues.

Actually, the process of composition usually isn't quiet as clean and simple as (1) getting the idea to name a piece after local landmark, and (2) writing down page after page of musical notes. Child revealed in a recent discussion that he already had some music in his head before he came up with the notion of a piece called "Washington Park." It was when the music and the theme came together that he knew he had something.

"The hardest part is the tabula rasa, the infinite possibilities. As soon as it crystallizes into something specific, that's when there's momentum," says Child. "I felt there was a good fit between the music and the way I experienced the park. It became integrated and a work of art that I understood."

Locations and Moods

The new piece is cast in three movements, reflecting different locations and moods of the park. A somber, pulsing opening, "Cenotaph," honors the Soldiers and Sailors Monument at the Henry Johnson Boulevard entrance to the park. The awakening of spring and the annual celebration of Tulip Fest come through in the second movement, "Floriade." And the piece ends quietly with "Still Lake," which includes an extended solo for cello.

"It's very beautiful and Ivesian," says Miller, who goes so far as to compare the piece to Charles Ives' classic "Three Places in New England," which was performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood just this past summer. Both works have a three- movement slow-fast-slow structure, open with depictions of Civil War monuments, and conclude with evocations of water (the Ives ends with "The Housatonic at Stockbridge.")