Describe the history of this concert series, starting with what sparked the idea for you.
Hunter Noack: I mean, at the beginning, it was really a combination of the two things that I love most: classical piano and being in the great outdoors. The kind of thematic inspiration of the program comes from the WPA, the Works Progress Administration, which was a government stimulus plan during the Great Depression of the 1930s and specifically, there was a federal Music and Theater Project which presented thousands of free concerts and plays, many of them outdoors in public lands.
And what I love about this was that, for one, the arts were a big part of a government stimulus plan, which I think signaled to the American people that the arts are, in fact, as important to the overall health of our society, as important as things like roads and schools. And I also love that it brought the fine arts out of the spaces that can sometimes feel exclusive or uncomfortable and into what I believe are our most democratic spaces, which are our public lands and our parks.
That's a beautiful concept. I'm wondering where you grew up, and if your interest in nature and music evolved side by side, or if they sort of meshed together later.
Noack: Yeah, I grew up with them side by side. I grew up in a small town in Central Oregon called Sunriver. Spent a lot of time outdoors, hunting and fishing and kayaking with my parents, but all the while playing music. When I was four years old, I started playing piano. My mother taught me, and so I always kind of wanted to be a concert pianist. And when I finished school, I was sort of thinking, “Okay, what am I going to do with my life?”
I had just done a backpacking trip through Yosemite with the Sierra Club, and I knew that I wanted to spend more time outdoors, and so I had heard about this opera production called Invisible Cities in Los Angeles, where they used wireless headphones to kind of bring concert hall quality sound into an unusual space - in their case, Union Station in Los Angeles. And so I wrote a grant to try that concept, to try using that technology outside. So we give the audience wireless headphones, so they can listen to the live music, wander and explore the landscape with the music as a soundtrack.
"The most common feedback is that this experience is in some way healing."
Do you have a sense of your audience if you're bringing your music to new audiences that are more comfortable outdoors, or if you're sort of expanding the experience of typical classical music fans?
Noack: Absolutely, it's kind of both. For about 1/3 of our audience, the In a Landscape concert is their very first experience with live classical music. But we also have a lot of classical music lovers who are excited to have a reason to travel and explore landscapes that they otherwise might not. But yeah, I think the greatest appeal is to those who are looking for a beautiful experience in the great outdoors, in nature. The most common feedback is that this experience is in some way healing.
It's very different from the feedback that I would get in a normal concert hall experience, where people have these relationships with and these experiences with just the music. There's something magical that happens when we're in nature, and everything is constantly changing - the lights, the sounds, the smells. People's senses are much more activated and heightened. And so it has this kind of magical effect when combined with live classical music, with these great works of beauty. And so it's really as much a pleasure for me to perform every concert as I think it is for people to get to experience this great music in these inspiring landscapes.
That's right, your senses would be heightened just being outdoors, outside the four walls we're used to in the typical day. So speaking of sights and sounds, you're getting a nine foot grand piano into all kinds of different settings. What are the logistics like? And are there any places that have been especially tricky to get into with your instrument and gear?
Definitely. So typically, it would take three professional movers to move this 1,000-pound, nine-foot Steinway. We've developed a kind of custom trailer that transforms into a stage, so we're able to bring this instrument and all of our equipment to almost anywhere that a four-by-four vehicle can go.
We've gone to the top of Mount Bachelor. We played in 110 degrees in the desert. We've also done concerts in -2 degrees in Big Sky, Montana in the snow. I really like taking this instrument to places that are kind of surprising, and where people, when they roll up, they think, “Wow, how did you get a nine-foot Steinway here?” That's part of the fun of it.
I think it's also a testament to the piano. It's a 1912 Steinway Model D. It's the same model of Steinway that's in Carnegie Hall and in most major halls around the world. And these instruments are really built to tour. And so this is a great example of that technology and that instrument.
When you're on tour, do you travel with the piano tuner?
Noack: We usually hire local piano tuners. We have a team of six that travels to help execute and produce the shows. But piano technicians, we usually try to source locally.
"I tend to fall in love easily every place we go."
Hunter, where would you like to give a concert that you haven't yet?
Noack: Oh, tough one. You know, we've gotten to play in some magical spots, like Yosemite National Park in the valley, Joshua Tree National Park, but I find that some of the most meaningful experiences are not in the celebrity location — they're in the county parks, the parks where people go regularly, and they have relationships with the spaces.
A huge part of the fun of this program is going into a place and learning from the people that are there — like, what is their favorite place to bring a picnic or go fishing? Or, where would be the most fun place to hear music? Every place has a story and has magic and has potential. And I tend to fall in love easily every place we go. I just want to stay there and live forever. So there isn't one particular place that comes to mind, I guess I would love to play in all of the national parks, and I would really love to be able to have a floating stage, so that we could play on bodies of water and have people out there kayaking and on the water experiencing the music.
That sounds fantastic. So you're not only just beckoning people to new dramatic landscapes they haven't explored, but you're actually bringing it to their comfort zones, where they might be recreating on the lake or something, or in their local park.
Noack: Yeah, that's right. You know, about 75% of our concerts happen in rural areas, and there are a lot of classical music lovers that aren't going to travel 3, 4, 5 hours to go to a city to see some classical music event. And there's also a lot of people that just don't have the same easy access to the performing arts, and so a big part of the feeling is to create events as much for the people that are local to the areas in which we're performing, as it is for people to use as a travel destination in it.
And so at every concert, it's about a 50-50 mix of locals and people that are traveling more than 50 miles to attend. It's not often that we have people from rural and urban areas coming together around something that's celebratory, where that really feels like a uniting activity, like a shared appreciation for the landscape, for the history and the culture. So it's really great to be kind of in the middle of this mix.
You're sort of mashing up audiences. I love that. And in the same way that we hear about food deserts, there can be concert deserts, too. So it's more inclusive. When you go out to the rural areas in these concerts, you play some of the piano repertoire people might expect - Debussy, Chopin - but you also have guest musicians and vocalists, and you don't stick with just classical European composers. Describe for us the range of genres and moods you're currently exploring.
Noack: Yeah, in a typical program, I play music that spans about 300 years. So we've got some Baroque, some classical, romantic, and contemporary. I like to choose music for the piano that is generally under 10 minutes, and I like to program music that has some sort of story or that's just beautiful. And I talk a little bit between each piece.
There are some pieces that are more spacious that I feel are better for wandering. With others, I will invite people up onto the stage to listen to the music from underneath the piano. There's a piece by Debussy called “Reflections in the Water,” where if we're near a body of water, I'll ask people to actually go stick their feet in the water and watch visually what's happening in the water, and see how Debussy tried to kind of elicit that visual through the notes that he wrote.
For the guest artists, I like to have people that are generally not classical musicians, people that have some connection with the landscape. Often it's local singers, or we work with this Grammy-winning Native American flutist James Edmond Greeley from Warm Springs reservation. We've also worked with dancers, visual artists, and poets. Several Oregon poet laureates have been a part of shows, and in those cases, we get to kind of actually collaborate and figure out what music would be interesting or evoke something in particular about this landscape. And so those can be some of the most rewarding collaborations when it's focused on a particular site.
We have an example of that. Let's hear a clip from “Fare Thee Well,” and this was recorded live at Wallowa Lake Lodge in Joseph, Oregon.
[music clip]
That was a clip from “Fare Thee Well” from the CD Hunter Noack and Friends: In a Landscape Live. Who was that vocalist?
Noack: That's May Arden, a phenomenal singer and guitar player who recorded her album there in Joseph, Oregon, and so I invited her out to come back and perform at Willow Lake Lodge. This folk song It's sometimes referred to as “Dink’s Song” - that's one of my favorite songs of all time, since I first heard May Arden sing it. It was just so much fun to get to play that with her and put it together there on the lawn, by the lake.
All right, in the minute or so that we have left, why don't you tell us some of your upcoming dates in the region and where people can find tickets?
Noack: You can find tickets at inalandscape.org. We have a couple of concerts in Central Oregon - Black Butte Ranch, Prineville - then out to the outdoor desert and on to Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, circling back into Washington. We're doing 49 concerts this season, and we're just getting rolling here in California. So we'll be on tour off and on through September.
