The pianist Hunter Noack, 36, is taking the road less traveled by, and that makes all the difference. As the founder and star attraction of “In a Landscape: Classical Music in the Wild,” inaugurated in 2016, Noack will be concertizing from May to September in Pacific Northwest and West Coast wildernesses, where weather can whiplash in a heartbeat. Fortunately, as a native Oregonian, he’s an outdoorsman for all seasons.
“I’ve been in places where it’s been 110,” Noack said recently over Zoom from his home in Portland, “and the day after, the same place has snow. When it’s cold, I tape heat packs all over my arms to keep the circulation going. At another concert, when the temperature was 107, there was a sprinkler going nearby. So I just jumped in and started the show soaking wet. The key is, kind of, to dress in layers. At Big Sky, in the winter, I’ve done concerts in negative two degrees.” Rain dates? Not on your life.
Noack honed his craft at conservatories such as the Interlochen Center for the Arts, the San Francisco Conservatory, and London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. If his peers dreamed of gold medals, power agents, and the glittering prizes of a superstar’s golden cage, Noack’s goal was to carve out a niche and a business model that could sustain itself over the years.
“I don’t have a management company,” Noack says. “So I almost never get calls to perform with any performing-arts center or orchestra. I’m just not on their radar.” With the help of family, the staff of 10 he has built, and philanthropists of an independent stripe, “In a Landscape” (named for a piano solo by John Cage) has chalked up more than 300 events in nine seasons, serving sellout crowds totaling 75,000 and counting. The vast majority of Noack’s listeners are attending a classical concert for the first time.
The experience Noack offers bears little resemblance to what would await them in a traditional setting. Spanning the centuries from the 1600s to the present, his 90-minute programs are dotted with some surprising names. Ever heard of Rosanna Scalfi Marcello, who made her living singing on a gondola in 18th-century Venice until swept to the altar by a Venetian aristocrat and composer? Or the 55-year-old Fazil Say, of Turkey, a mesmerizing pianist in his own right and spinner of cinematic musical adventures? To expand the palette further, Noack always likes to include a concerto movement, performed with a pre-recorded orchestra, Music Minus One–style.
Personal electronics provide another unconventional accent. Listeners are outfitted with state-of-the-art headphones, enabling them to move freely while also staying in touch with the music—as well as with Noack’s voice. “I always try to give people something to do or think about,” the artist says. “If I’m about to play Debussy’s ‘Reflections in the Water’ and we’re by a body of water, I might tell them to take off their shoes, go wading, and watch the play of the light.”
The logistics of his odysseys would challenge Aladdin’s genie—so much so that when Noack approached Steinway & Sons about supplying an instrument, the venerable piano builder turned him down. Lovely idea, they said, but too much risk to the piano.
“Still, I really felt it was important to have the same type of nine-foot grand you’d hear in Carnegie Hall.” So he made a pitch to the Portland-based real-estate tycoon, collector, and philanthropist Jordan Schnitzer. “Great,” Schnitzer said. “I’ll buy it. Go find one.”
Noack found “Maude,” a vintage 1912 beauty he named after the 79-year-old heroine of Harold and Maude, which is sort of a road movie, after all. She travels in a custom-built trailer that converts into a covered stage. “We can hook the trailer up to a snowcat, to a truck, to anything, and bring it basically anywhere,” Noack says. “And then with, you know, about 45 minutes, we can set it up for a show.”
“In a Landscape: Classical Music in the Wild” will begin with a preview at Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, Oregon, on May 5, before continuing through Oregon, California, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana until September 21
Matthew Gurewitsch writes about opera and classical music for AIR MAIL. He lives in Hawaii