‘In A Landscape’ concerts bring a grand piano to Oregon’s most scenic vistas

sun sets over the water behind the silhouette of a man playing a grand piano

Hunter Noack performs during a concert at Shore Acres State Park in Coos Bay on Aug. 11.Samantha Swindler/The Oregonian

How do you get a nine-foot grand piano to the top of a mountain, or the heart of the desert, or the edge of a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean?

Just ask Portland pianist Hunter Noack.

Noack is the founder and artist director behind “In A Landscape: Classical Music in the Wild,” a traveling outdoor concert series that takes a 1912 Steinway grand piano into state parks and other natural areas.

To do so, the In A Landscape team created a custom piano trailer that converts into a stage. The trailer contains a scissor lift that can raise and lower the piano body. The legs come off, and the piano is transported while lying flat on a bed of foam.

In six years, In A Landscape has traveled thousands of miles across Oregon and neighboring states, putting on more than 120 concerts in close to 80 different locations – at Fort Rock State Natural Area, on top of Mount Bachelor, in the Alvord Desert and along the Columbia River.

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“This piano is not in the pristine condition that it would be if it were in Carnegie Hall, but it’s probably seen more of the world than any other piano,” Hunter said. “It’s this incredible machine, and we are challenging it, but in doing so, we’re sharing it with people who otherwise would never have the opportunity to see it, let alone get close to it and lie under it and touch it.”

For select songs, Hunter invites listeners onto the trailer to lie under the piano, feel its vibrations and watch its inner workings. During a recent show at Shore Acres State Park in Coos Bay, a half dozen people gathered under and around Hunter as he performed Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2, the famous funeral march.

man plays a grand piano while several people lie under it on their backs

Concert goers lie under and around the piano as Hunter Noack performs during an In A Landscape concert in Coos Bay.Samantha Swindler/The Oregonian

The goal of the project, said executive director Lori Noack, is to “remove barriers to classical music and to the outdoors.”

Lori is both the executive director of the In A Landscape nonprofit, as well as Hunter’s mother.

“But I like to say that first I’m the executive director and then I’m his mother,” she said. “I was a professional in this field for many years while Hunter was growing up.”

Which is why when Hunter received a grant in 2016 to produce a series of outdoor concerts in the Portland area, he asked her for help. She had spent eight years as director of the Sunriver Music Festival in Bend and worked as a consultant in arts program management.

So, she knew one of the biggest, long-standing challenges in the classical music industry: How do you bring in new audiences?

Too often, classical music is seen as overly formal and expensive. In A Landscape markets itself to hikers, bicyclists, outdoors people and families. There’s no dress code, not even any chairs. Listeners can bring a blanket, lawn chair or a picnic.

General admission tickets are $30, and a limited number of free tickets are always provided to locals at the performance site.

“One-third of our audience has never before experienced live classical music,” Lori said. “Why are they hearing it? It’s because we’re bringing the piano out to Lake County and Wheeler County and Harney County, we’re coming out here to Shore Acres State Park where people can wear their sweatpants and their jeans and feel like they’re just part of the family.”

Listeners can hear the piano acoustically, but they’re also given wireless headphones and encouraged to wander the area while listening to the concert. Hunter tells stories between songs, and his microphone only transmits to the headphones, not to speakers.

“We have a policy to not send false sound amplification out into nature,” Lori said.

Portland businessman Jordan Schnitzer has been a major financial supporter of the project, purchasing the wireless sound system for the concerts. When Hunter approached him after the first season with a plan to travel even farther across Oregon, Schnitzer purchased the nine-foot Steinway used in the traveling performances.

Before his concert in Coos Bay on Aug. 11, where the evening temperature dropped into the 50s, Hunter taped rows of hand warmers around his arms. He’s played in freezing temperatures, in the heat and in the rain (with a canopy brought in overhead).

“Every show is totally different. Sometimes I feel like I’m working in spite of the weather and in spite of the conditions and I have to try even harder to communicate because my hands are cold, or it’s windy and I can’t hear quite as well, and there’s something beautiful in that and challenging,” he said.

“And other landscapes, it’s as if the landscape is just giving me a big hug.”

In this setting, the musician’s green room is quite literally a picnic table in the open greenery. Concertgoers come up to chat with Hunter before the show. Afterward, a few play the piano themselves. If a traditional classical music concert can be viewed as potentially stuffy, the vibe here is like a family reunion.

“I like to be here early and walk around and talk to people who are here and just be in the space with everyone,” Hunter said. “It feels so not precious. It feels very neighborly.”

When the music begins, it’s a stirring juxtaposition of natural and human-made beauty. During the Coos Bay concert, sea lions could be heard over both the crash of the waves and Franz Liszt’s “Un Sospiro.” At one point, several deer wandered into the open space. Couples sat along a stone ledge to watch the sunset.

woman holds her hand to headphones, eyes closed, facing the ocean

A woman listens via wireless headphones to Hunter Noack’s piano performance during an In A Landscape concert at Shore Acres State Park.Samantha Swindler/The Oregonian

“It’s a way to have people be immersed in a landscape without just stopping to look, click a picture, and leave,” Lori said. “They sit there, the music is moving over and through them, at the same time, they’re looking at the landscape and hopefully feeling and experiencing it in a new way.”

A technician tunes the instrument before every show, but a piano still reacts to the elements. As a heavy fog rolled in on the first of two nights of performances in Coos Bay, the F sharp went flat.

Hunter laughed as he acknowledged the faulty key and embraced it. The imperfection is part of the experience.

For more information on In A Landscape, and to see a list of upcoming concerts, visit inalandscape.org.

-- Samantha Swindler, @editorswindler, sswindler@oregonian.com

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