If you’ve never attended a classical piano concert in nature, this year could be your chance.
“In a Landscape,” the outdoor concert series from Portland pianist Hunter Noack, will once again visit spectacular settings in Oregon and around the west this year, inviting people to experience the confluence of live music and nature.
The initial 2023 schedule, announced Tuesday, features 27 concerts at 21 locations in Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. The tour will visit remote landscapes such as the Alvord Desert and busier locales such as the San Francisco Botanical Garden. Organizers promised more dates to come this year.
Tickets for the events will go on sale March 20 for the general public online at inalandscape.org, with a pre-sale March 15 for those who make donations to support the tour. Ticket prices have not been announced for 2023, but for last year’s concerts general admission tickets were $30, and a limited number of free tickets were always provided to locals at the performance site.
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“In a Landscape” features Noack and a nine-foot Steinway grand piano that travels on a flatbed truck across the region, a tour inspired by the Federal Theatre Project, which put on works of art in parks and other spaces throughout the 1930s.
Attendees listen to Noack using wireless headphones, due to the lack of acoustics in the open spaces, and the pianist encourages people to wander the landscape during the show. During some songs, he invites people to lie down underneath the piano.
The tour is challenging both for instrument and musician, but that’s a challenge he seems to relish.
“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,” Noack told The Oregonian/OregonLive in a 2021 interview. “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.”
Here’s the 2023 “In a Landscape” schedule:
APRIL
April 22: Prineville Reservoir State Park (Prineville, Oregon) SOLD OUT
MAY
May 22, 23: Filoli Historic House and Garden (Woodside, California)
May 24, 25: San Francisco Botanical Garden (San Francisco, California)
May 27: Jack London State Historic Park (Glen Ellen, California)
JUNE
June 2: Warm Springs Reservation (Warm Springs, Oregon)
June 17: Alvord Desert (Fields, Oregon)
June 19: John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (Dayville, Oregon)
JULY
July 5, 6: Silver Falls State Park (Sublimity, Oregon)
July 19: Tetherow Resort (Bend, Oregon)
July 21: Wallowa Lake State Park (Joseph, Oregon)
July 23: Wallowa Lake Lodge (Joseph, Oregon)
July 25, 26: Location TBA (Ketchum, Idaho)
July 29: Huntsville Monastery (Huntsville, Utah)
July 31: Woodbury Preserve (Jackson, Wyoming)
AUGUST
Aug. 2: Six Springs Ranch (Driggs, Idaho)
Aug. 30: Meadowbrook Farm Preserve (North Bend, Washington)
SEPTEMBER
Sept. 3: Camp Meriwether (Cloverdale, Oregon)
Sept. 6: Valley Flora Farm (Langlois, Oregon)
Sept. 7, 8: Shore Acres State Park (Coos Bay, Oregon)
Sept. 12: East Lake Resort (La Pine, Oregon)
Sept. 19, 20: (Stoller Family Estate Dayton, Oregon)
— Jamie Hale
503-294-4077; jhale@oregonian.com; @HaleJamesB