(Photo | Courtesy of IN A LANDSCAPE)

The Perfect Socially Distanced Concert Experience Set to Return for Seventh Season in 2022 with Concerts in Oregon, California, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho & Montana

Hunter Noack, classical pianist, naturalist, and founder of the award-winning, groundbreaking wilderness concert series, IN A LANDSCAPE: Classical Music in the Wild, opens the 7th season of 60 concerts on May 18 with concerts in northern California at San Francisco Botanical Gardens, Jack London State Historic Park, and Filoli Historic House and Garden. The tour continues in Oregon on June 4 with two at the Alvord desert and dozens of other locations. Tickets are now available to see Noack at these concerts in national parks, state parks, ranches, farms, and gardens across the Western United States through October.

Founded in 2016 by Noack, IN A LANDSCAPE is an outdoor concert series presented in America’s most stunning landscapes. As a nonprofit with a mission to celebrate both classical music and the outdoors in experiences that are accessible to all, the team brings a nine-foot Steinway grand piano to the middle of forests, fields, calderas, and historical sites for classical music concerts. To meet the acoustical challenges of performing in the wild, music is transmitted to the concert-goers via wireless headphones. No longer confined to seats, they are free to explore the landscape, wander through secret glens, lie in sunny meadows, and roam old growth forests. Over 6 years, 145 concerts have been presented in dramatic locations including Oregon’s Mt. Bachelor, Alvord Desert, Crater Lake National Park, and Smith Rock State Park, Montana’s Big Sky Resort, Jackson, Wyoming, Idaho’s Teton Valley and California’s Sierra Mountains.

In the spirit of the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) Federal Music and Theater Projects, which presented thousands of free concerts and plays in theaters, public spaces and parks across the country during the Great Depression, IN A LANDSCAPE events are subsidized by grants, sponsors and individual donors.

Noack grew up exploring, hunting, fishing, and kayaking the rivers of Oregon, forming a strong connection to nature. He started piano at age 4 in Sunriver and by the fifth grade he was up at 4am to light a fire and practice piano before taking the bus to school. After intensive training at Interlochen Arts Academy, San Francisco Conservatory, University of Southern California (B.M.), and Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London (M.A.), Noack returned to Oregon and founded IN A LANDSCAPE, which has been praised as “The most exciting classical music project in America.”

Noack, an occasional guest performer with Pink Martini, is inspired by the work of John Muir, who said we need “beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul” (John Muir, The Yosemite (1912)), and Frederick Law Olmsted, who believed our parks and public lands are our most democratic spaces. With music in magical landscapes, IN A LANDSCAPE brings together a wide cross-section of people who would otherwise rarely be sharing a concert experience together. Cowboys, city folk, children, hipsters, and matrons flock from cities and deserts alike to hear Noack perform on a 9-foot Steinway grand piano on a flat-bed trailer. They sit with a picnic or wander through the landscape listening to classical music through wireless headphones. Noack also collaborates with guest artists who are atypical of traditional classical concerts, including poets, Native American musicians, dancers, singers, and visual artists. IN A LANDSCAPE has won multiple awards and has been featured on CBS This Morning, in the Los Angeles Times, and as part of TEDxPortland.

After six years of performing outdoors, Noack’s debut album, also titled, In a Landscape will be released on June 8, 2022 at the iconic Silver Falls State Park, as part of the 100th anniversary of Oregon State Parks. The album features select favorites from the classical piano canon like Maurice Ravel’s “Ondine” and Robert Schumann’s “Forest Scenes”, as well as collaborations with Native American flutist James Edmund Greeley, psychedelic electronics by Dave Friedlander, a spacious movement from a Ravel piano concerto with the Salem Orchestra, and an arrangement of Franz Schubert’s “Serenade” with Pink Martini’s China Forbes and Thomas Lauderdale. The album, which aims to transport listeners to the secret glens and sunny meadows that inspired the composers and performers featured in this contemplative collection, will be released on vinyl, CD, and digital.

About the album, Noack says “The title track, In a Landscape by John Cage, inspired the name of the album and the concert series. Cage, like other post-war avant garde composers, challenged us to reconsider what ‘music’ is and asked us to consider all noise — and its absence — as music. My challenge is to reconsider the environment in which we experience art.

For more information or to schedule Hunter Noack for an interview, contact Lori Noack at media@inalandscape.org or visit inalandscape.org.

Additional Links:
CBS This Morning
2021 Visual Review
L.A. Times

IN A LANDSCAPE: Classical Music in the Wild
2022 Tour

Click on “2022 Tickets” at inalandscape.org

Big Sky Resort
Big Sky, Montana
January 22, 23

San Francisco Botanical Garden
San Francisco, California
May 18, 19

Jack London State Historic Park
Glen Ellen, California
May 21, 22

Filoli Historic House & Garden
Woodside, California
May 24, 25

Alvord Desert
Princeton, Oregon
June 4, 5

The Suttle Lodge
Sisters, Oregon
June 7

Silver Falls State Park
Sublimity, Oregon
June 8, 9

Stoller Family Estate
Dayton, Oregon
June 15, 16

Cottonwood Canyon State Park
Wasco, Oregon
June 18, 19

Wallowa Lake Lodge
Joseph, Oregon
June 21

Wallowa Lake State Park
Joseph, Oregon
June 22, 23

Sumpter Dredge State Heritage Area
Sumpter, Oregon
June 25, 26

John Day Fossil Beds National Mon.
Cant Ranch
Dayville, Oregon
June 28, 29

Imperial River Company
Maupin, Oregon
June 30

Warm Springs Reservation
Warm Springs, Oregon
July 2

Lithia Park
Ashland, Oregon
July 11

Crater Lake National Park
Discovery Point, Oregon
July 13

Newberry National Volcanic Monument
East Lake
La Pine, Oregon
July 15

Mt. Bachelor
Bend, Oregon
July 17, 18

Tetherow Resort
Bend, Oregon
July 20

Pine Meadow Ranch
Sisters, Oregon
July 22

Huntsville Monastery
Huntsville, Utah
August 6

Jug Mountain Ranch
McCall, Idaho
August 10

Kelley Point Park
Portland, Oregon
August 13

Hoyt Arboretum
Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Portland, Oregon
August 14, 15

Dunes Meadow Park
Gearhart, Oregon
August 19, 20

Lewis & Clark Timberlands
Cannon Beach, Oregon
August 21

Shore Acres State Park
Charleston, Oregon
August 23, 24, 25

Crissey Field State Recreation Site
Brookings, Oregon
August 27

Fort Rock State Natural Area
Fort Rock, Oregon
September 3, 4

Smith Rock State Park
Terrebonne, Oregon
September 6, 7

Sun Valley Museum of Art
Hailey, Idaho
September 10, 11

The Woodbury Preserve
Jackson, Wyoming
September 13

Pontirussa Ranch
East Alta, Wyoming
September 17

Joshua Tree National Park
Hidden Valley, California
October 24, 25

Yosemite National Park
Lower River Amphitheater
California
October 27

Golden Gate National Recreation Area
Crissy Field
San Francisco, California
October 29, 30