In A Landscape: Outdoor Piano Concerts, Headphones, and Conservation with Hunter Noack

Kim Allchurch Flick: Hello and welcome to the Mighty Measure Podcast. Today is really unique. I’m speaking with Hunter Noack, a classical pianist and founder of In a Landscape, talking about melody and mother nature. Harmonizing music with conservation efforts in a landscape is interesting, unique, beautiful, and it’s a combination of an immersive experience.

That takes place in urban and rural landscapes where conservation is taking place, where people can listen to one of the most gifted people I know and also be able to engage with the arts, the beauty of classical music in community and connection with increased awareness and appreciation. Here we are with Hunter Noack.

Hunter Noack: Great to see you. Thanks for having me, Kim. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Thanks for being on. I know things are busy for you. And tell us a little bit about your journey and what has inspired you to this point with your music, but also the creation of In A Landscape. 

Hunter Noack: I grew up in Central Oregon and I grew up spending a lot of time.

In the outdoors and but also playing the piano. And so I went away to boarding school to study music, then went to at Interlochen Arts Academy finished high school in San Francisco and went to this. San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Went to USC down in Southern California, studied with John Perry, and then got a master’s in London with Ronan Ahorra and Paul Roberts at the Guild Hall School of Music and Drama.

And both at USC and Guild Hall. At USCI was I really loved the work that the theater kids were doing. They were. They were like taking plays that they thought were interesting and just producing them in, in abandoned warehouses, in kind of old hotels. And it was like immersive theater.

It was really scrappy and it felt really exciting. And so I, in contrast to what I was seeing in the classical music world, which was, there was some kind of interesting programming, but for the most part it, we were in the same institutional, like conservatory setting where it was, a lot of the focus was on competitions and on perpetuating this way of performing, which I think is amazing. In the concert hall, dressed up with formalities, playing complete works. No talking during the program. I think there’s, I think there’s value in that tradition and, and I do appreciate that, but I was just I found myself more like if I had a choice between which shows I wanted to go see, I would go see a theater show in an abandoned hotel downtown Los Angeles. Then go see a, a piano recital. So that kind of got me, I think. Interested in trying to figure out ways where I could bring a little bit of that adventurous spirit into my own work and performances. And for example, my senior recital at USC, I had some, I had some my, one of my.

One of my best friends, who is an incredible actor, Lindsay Garrett, she read some poetry. I worked with a lighting designer to change the lighting. I roped off the seat, so everybody had to sit really close to the piano in the hall. And I just, and I, oh, and I also made the program like.

I had each piece connected to a different poem that was read, and the program was printed a little bit more like a menu than like a formal program and. It was like slightly different. I still just came out and performed the pieces, some poetry read in between, but it was like a little window into just changing things a little bit.

Changing the context and the environment in which people listened to this music completely changes their experience of it. And after USCI spent a year in San Francisco producing a play with my friend Joel Heinrich who’s a director and playwright. And we decided to create this a piece of immersive theater that was rooted in in some music.

So at some, at times the. S actors would, with their text, would move the story forward, and then other times we’d let the music take on that storytelling role. So we had at Soma Arts in San Francisco, we had the piano on a rotating stage in the middle of the space, and we built a four room set.

And so when. The actors were in run room. The piano would be facing them, and the audience was also in that room. And then as the actors moved to the next room, the p the piano would rotate. And so would the the audience would follow the the actors along and 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, wow. 

Hunter Noack: And, I, it was so much fun and people, it was a wacky and weird play.

That was also kind of dark. But it was my first, it was my first chance producing something, we were just having a lot of fun. We were like, we would meet at Dolores Park or meet in the cemetery at Oakland, and we would just like, brainstorm like, what, how could we make a, like the most fun show that we would wanna see and that, that kind of experiment.

Took a few months. We held auditions for the actors. We raised some money. We sold out all of the, I think we did four or six performances. And and that kind of helped me, feel like, I was really kind of struggling with, okay, do I. Do I have a little window of time to do competitions.

Most big competitions after you’re 30 or 32, you’ve aged out. And so there’s a narrow window to learn a bunch of repertoire and prepare for this kind of traditional track. And even in competition, it’s a gamble. It’s very political and everybody that per that makes it into even the semi-finals of the Van Clyburn or the Rubenstein or any of these international competitions.

They’re like, they’re incredible pianists. And then the winners, are just, it’s they’re of course above and beyond, but I was still torn between going in that direction, full steam or trying to do something that was a little bit outside of, down a path that I couldn’t exactly see.

So I decided to go to Guild Hall School of Music and Drama because they. They were very interested in positioning themselves as a 21st century conservatory. They were really promoting their collaborative arts program, or as they called it, cross arts, and they wanted to bring in students that had an interest in an exploring worlds between the kind of.

Hard tracks of performing arts. So for me, I was really interested in theater and drama and also in, in classical piano. And so I chose to go there with the hope that they would have some additional resources for me to play. And and they did. I got to go to attend a improvisation conference in the Hague.

I won a collaborate award to pro to produce my own kind of to produce a sh a piece of immersive theater at the Barkin Center. And that show I’ll talk a little bit about because that really teed up, I think, in a landscape. 

So it was a kind of a. Theatrical girl presentation of a piece of classical music.

So we took it was actually Johanna proNova her. She was, I played in a chamber group with her. She’s a phenomenal cellist and it was her idea to use this piece by Arnold Sheinberg called Fair Clariton Nat, which means Transfigured night. And so it’s, this piece is Byberg who’s his legacy is in 12 tone music. But before he switched over to 12 Tone he was like, his music was very romantic and like kind of Wagnerian, this piece was inspired by a poem that was written a few years before by Richard DeMel, which describes, it’s a short poem, which describes a woman who’s walking in a forest alone at night, or no, sorry, she’s not alone.

She’s walking in a forest at night with the, with her lover. She’s pregnant and the father of the child is not her, the lover that she’s currently walking with, and. It’s a beautiful kind of poem because the man that she’s with basically says, I love you. I love this child as my own. And, there’s no shame.

There’s no guilt. It’s all about basically love and acceptance and transforming. The kind of transformational power of love all set in a nighttime forest. And so I, when just listening to this music, it does feel cinematic. And what I wanted to do was try and bring that set, bring that environment into the space so that.

Like my teacher Paul Roberts, one of the things I loved that he would do is lecture recitals where he would talk about each piece and give us some context. Before we heard the music, so that we knew what to listen for. And I found that kind of way of storytelling and way of listening to music, especially classical music.

Really helpful because I was more engaged in the story. And then whether that was a story about the composer or the piece, or even about the performer. And so what my kind of task or goal with Transfigured Night was. I wanted to give the audience all of the information that they might get in a lecture recital, but give that to them in the physical set in the environment.

So I worked with a set designer, Anna Drift Meyer, and a lighting designer Jack. We are both both students at Guild Hall at the time, and we like together created this world so that. In this black box theater, when the audience came into the space, they walked through what they walked through this forest and there was, oh, like fog and we had branches on the ground and stumps set out. So you it felt like I also burnt sage. So you know, there was some sense, different kind of senses being activated that made you feel like, okay, I’m in a different world now. I’m in, I’m clearly in the forest and it’s nighttime.

And then we had two actors, dramatize. Basically perform the poem in period costume. And Sophie Roberts, the one of the actors, she ended up becoming my collaborative partner in starting a whole company that where this kind of theatrical project was going to be our mission.

But anyway, so they performed the poem and then the moonlight came up on the actors. With her kind of seated in the middle of them so that it showed that this music is going to be their it’s like her inner world made audible. And so then they performed before performed the piece.

And the like. I didn’t perform at all during that show. I was just, basically directing it and watching it. And it was so satisfying because one, I got to be on the other side of perf performing. But also just to see the power of context, the power of a different environment and what that effect is.

On listening to a piece of live classical music. So after that, Sophie and I decided that, we really liked this kind of concept. We wanted to do it more. So we started a company called Reform Productions, and we were just going to be based in London and do these, theatrical presentations of classical music work.

It was very open. But at that point I had to go back to the US because I was switching over my student visa to a work visa. And in that period of time she started a family and I, she fell in love and decided to stay in Portland. So our kind of reform productions company never really got off the ground in London.

So I’m back in I’m in Oregon, in the state. I grew up in spending a lot of time outdoors and just remembering remembering how much I love being outside. The, one of the most like transformational. Experiences in my life was a backpacking trip with Sierra Club when I was 19. I think I was 19 and I went backpacking in Yosemite for, I don’t know, five or seven days.

I can’t remember. And I just remember like leaving that trip and I had never felt as good as I. As I did that trip, and so remembering that, remembering time with my dad out fishing and hunting and I just, I knew that like in this next chapter of my life, I wanted to organize it so that I was able to spend much more time outside.

I was in Portland doing kind of odd jobs, accompanying choirs, doing kind of whatever I could to make a buck. And then I, with the help of my partner Thomas Lauderdale and my mother, Lori Nowalk, who’s now the executive director of Landscape and Craig Comano, my stepdad we together they really helped.

Write this grant that was to test out in a landscape or test out what became in a landscape. This first grant was to, was written for Regional Arts and Culture Council, which in Portland is like a regional granting program. The award money both to institutions and also to individual artists to try projects and.

So the pitch was basically try and bring this music that I love into these landscapes that I find inspiring. And I am going to divert just for one ’cause there’s one other piece that was particularly inspiring to in a landscape, which was a show in Los Angeles by Yuval Shaone and his company, the industry, it was called Invisible Cities.

And it was an a, a new opera that took place at Union Station in Los Angeles. There was a, an orchestra singers, dancers, and the. The audience was given wireless headphones, so the orchestra was in one area, but the singers were moving all across the station. So it was like an immersive play where you could choose your own, you could choose a character you wanted to see.

It reminded me of this punch drunk show I saw in London where. You could go night after night and have a completely different experience because the show is whatever you, whatever character you followed. And I thought that was really cool. So I wrote a grant to try out this wireless headphone concept because that was a way to bring classical, acoustic music out into these spaces that aren’t designed for classical music.

And. That’s so we, I got the grant. Jordan Schnitzer liked the idea and so he bought the, he helped underwrite the cost of the headphones the first year. And the, so we did nine shows in the three counties around Portland at WPA sites and public parks. Which was the theme of the.

The grant wanting to get people in what I believe are our most democratic spaces, which are public lands, and also call attention to a government stimulus program that I know had a lot of problems, but generally I thought was really cool because it included the arts which is the works progress administration.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s and through the federal music and theater projects, they presented thousands of free concerts and plays many of which took place outside in parks. I didn’t really know about that. Thomas showed me about a little more about the WPA and the different programs that just seemed like, so cool. So anyway, I, that was the impetus for the first year, which was in 2016. And then it went really well. The feedback was different than any feedback I had from my regular concerts. It was like, there was clearly people were coming to me afterwards, emotionally very moved. And I knew that there was something about the power of this music and the power of these places, that combination that was greater than this. Whatever that saying is, the sum of the parts is greater than, I can’t remember.

So that, gave me some confidence to, I was like we have to, we should do this again. And so my mom was on board and so we we wrote another grant to Oregon Community Foundation to try and take this concept around the state. I asked Jordan if he would buy a nine foot Steinway grand piano for the project because I felt it was really important to have.

Like the same instrument that’s at Carnegie Hall. Going to these, going to what I think are, as magical of landscapes as our great cathedrals and performance halls the tops of mountains, the middle of canyons and out in deserts. I thought we have to have this instrument that kind of also says.

Like power and grandeur and, it can play as, as quietly as a little tiny flower, but also give you the feeling of being of grandeur and space. And so Jordan bought the piano that we still currently use, which is a 19 12 9 foot Steinway model D. And it’s been, totally rebuilt, but but.

I guess I will maybe take a breath and let you ask another question, but that’s the, I guess the project summary of how I got to in a landscape and maybe I should say what in a landscape is, ’cause I’m not sure. So in a landscape is it’s a series of outdoor classical piano concerts where we give the audience wireless headphones so you can listen to the live music.

And wander and explore the landscape with the music as a soundtrack to your experience. And so we do about 50 concerts every season. For the last, well, since 2016. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: And as you were speaking, I was thinking about it is almost like a perfect convergence of. Outdoors. These things were not usual for an audience.

And I grew up with a dad who loved classical music and in England and Holland to Belgium, and he took us to places to see ballet, but we dressed up to go to concerts and he would put me to sleep by playing an LP of sleeping Beauty, or it was something classical. I grew up with that. But it was never outdoors.

It was never outside of these spaces. 

Right. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: And then when I moved to Portland and I didn’t know anybody I bought myself a solo subscription to the Oregon Symphony. It put me back into my childhood to sit in a hall and listen to beautiful music. It as a listener, it hadn’t occurred to me that much.

And also technology has evolved over time. And until we could walk around with music. We didn’t and the thought of ha those two things coming together, having these, and I also am very outdoorsy. I’d love to be outdoors. To have the music and the outdoors come together is really something. And that’s why I think in a landscape is super, super special.

And the technology, it’s almost the right places in the right time. To be able to do this that may not have been available to you earlier and you’re also love for the spaces, but also the thought of what the WPA did way back when that, that the arts are important and at a time when, you know budgets are being slashed and all sorts of things are happening, some might consider the arts frivolous and I really.

Love that you and people like you in the arts put so much into saying, no, these, this is important. It’s important for human health. And then within a landscape, it seems like there’s also the spotlight on environmental health being added to that. So as landscape’s in its 11th year now, and as it’s grown, what have been.

What journey is an overused word for this ’cause you’re journeying around all the time with this piano. And I’ll tell the listeners also, I have for the last probably nine years, been a volunteer for this. And what I find is that no concert is alike. I can hear the same music over and over again and be incredibly delighted with it.

And also I have learned about landscapes that. Things that I never knew. For instance, knowing at Mount Pisca that Oregon White Oak is endangered. While I’m listening to music, I’m also learning something about the beauty, but the fragility of all of this. And you’ve been to some landscapes. Where things are happening to make something better.

Like converting a golf course into a space that has more biodiversity, that also means it’s being watered less, and all these things layered together while listening to music is pretty incredible. And so tell us what it’s like for you and what have, what’s happened during the 10 years? In the evolution of our landscape.

’cause it went from Oregon to now something at five States plus Canada. 

Hunter Noack: Yeah. I I think the part of, when I, when we first started this, I was thinking, if we test this concept, other people will see it and then, other people will be doing this because it’s. It’s difficult, but the concept is simple.

Basically we’re taking, we’re take, we’re using this wireless headphone technology to bring music into places that otherwise hadn’t been. And mostly the way that this, the way it is being used is with like DJs and silent discos. But there, as far as I know, nobody else is doing.

What we’re doing, which is surprising to me. But I think it’s also, in a way, it’s not surprising because what my, because my interest is not just in classical music, it’s also in those things that you’re talking about. Like I, I love learning about, land projects, whether it’s, whether it’s how a timber company manages their forest, or how a conservation group is rehabilitating a landscape, or how a rancher, grazes their cattle on public land, in a way that allows them to graze every year. Everybody I find that like my interest is in the stories of the people that are living.

That have a relationship with the landscape in which they’re living that is that is like deeply connected on a daily level. When we live in a city it’s a lot easier to become disconnected from systems and from how we get our food and our water and where our waste goes.

And so part of part of like my desire to be outside is also a desire to like, to know people and know communities that have a different relationship with the land that they’re in. And so I think that drives a lot of that interest. Determines in part where we go, like where we bring the piano because, there are an, there are a gazillion parks from national parks to state to county to, city parks.

And there are an infinite number of beautiful places and inspiring landscapes to. Put the piano and to have to share, a 90 minute experience together. So how do we choose 50 in a million? And it’s, it just becomes this like organic process where we learn about. Maybe it’s, I see something on the side of the road, or maybe somebody comes to a concert and they, they tell me about their biodynamic winery, and then I make it time to go look at it and learn how they got into this.

It’s just like following the white rabbit down the path. And there are, of course, there are so many places where I wish we could bring the piano and do a concert where it doesn’t make sense to gather a few hundred people or, we, we have to make all kinds of decisions to whittle down the the sites that we actually get to go to.

But I think the question about the function of, say classical piano is. Is an important one. Because there, there have been times when I’m playing the piano where I’m like, I see the world burning. And I’m like, is this really, is sitting in this practice room really the best use of my time?

Shouldn’t I be out rebuilding? Shouldn’t I be out like physically in the world helping where I know where there’s like a. Life and death situations. And the way that I think about the purpose of all of this is that I really have to believe, I have to believe that what I’m doing makes a difference.

And that I have to believe that telling. These stories that are in the music, I think of it like if I were if each piece were a spell and I could, some sort of healing spell and I, if I master it, then I can share that with people and it will on some sort of indirect plane of magic.

Will help, will be helpful. And like I know that I’m not out there feeding soup to the hungry. I’m like but there’s there’s been a enough of a tradition and enough people that I respect that have said, this body of work, this music is worth. Is worth keeping alive and is worth sharing. And even though it’s not as easy for me to at this point articulate why I know because I’ve seen what happens when people listen to it and I’ve see, and I felt what happens when I’m practicing it?

I feel, and I know that there’s there’s power and magic in it. And so I don’t think I think that playing this music outside and playing the music within the landscape with people gathered out in these, out in spaces that are very welcoming for everyone there. They’re parks. They’re like, maybe not the most spectacular parks all the time, but they’re community spaces.

Like that feeling of coming together and gathering and like paying attention to something that’s beautiful is really enriching and rewarding. And so that, that’s made me fall even more in love. With the music and it changes the way that I like that I approach music. When I was like in my training, I was was very like.

Regimented. I even from when I was about 11 years old, I woke up at four 30 in the morning to start practicing and I would practice before school and I was obsessed with having technique and I wasn’t ever like a prodigy, but I wanted to be. I maybe wasn’t always the best of the best.

There was like always a star kind of super. Super human talent and my teachers through college, they all said that I had something really special and there was, they used this word potential and that, that’s, that was encouraging in a way, but also telling that, I wasn’t the rock solid competition winning.

Machine that could, that, I would have memory lapses and I, my fingers would get cold and I would stumble around and I just, I didn’t there were definitely like challenges that I was really focused on trying to get over. And the consequence of that was that

I didn’t do as much playing like joyful practice where there’s, most of my practice sessions were very goal oriented, like learning the notes, getting, figuring out how to get this music in my in, in me. But not a lot of kind of exploratory. Playful, fun practice sessions. And so I think through this project and through the, just even getting to play the same, perform the same program more than once it takes the pressure off and also allows for.

Like more play. And that has helped me fall more in love with the music. And so I think if I mean for me in particular, if I didn’t have this project, I probably would be doing something else by now. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Interesting. I’ll say it again. It’s. Absolutely fine with me to hear the music over and over and over again.

The same pieces. And sometimes it gets to the point where my earworm is an entire concert, and they’re all amazing and they all mean something. And I think about you being on the piano because in my role as a volunteer. I getting there early I see the work and your amazing team, and it takes a lot of work to set up and get ready.

Then you have tuners coming and there’s so many moving parts and as people start arriving and sometimes I’m one of ’em arriving just a little on edge or having just heard the news or have work on my mind or whatever it might be, and leaving in a completely different emotional state often. Often amazing and calm, and I’ve called it the best and least expensive therapy I’ve ever had, and noticing people and noticing also, some of your greatest fans are not human.

I’ve always seen birds. Will just fly over or perch the elk that walked in one time. And that is a, another connection to the, these landscapes. I also appreciate that when someone is there with an information table, like you have conservation districts or land trust or a private organization, I find that people spend more time with them than they might under other circumstances.

The other thing about wandering and listening to music, it’s a slower pace than a hike might be. Yeah. And I think it also allows for more observation. Yeah. And when Rachmaninoff is playing and it’s grass blowing, what I really think about is often how do we help organizations protect this? How do we keep these places preserved might be the wrong word, but.

Keep them cared for and cared about. 

And the more people that know the better and the music is feeding into all of that and your talent and the way you play. It’s just in just incredible. And it is also, this is a business, a nonprofit, but there’s a lot of moving parts to it as well. There’s, you’re giving jobs to people, there’s logistics, there’s contracts, there’s.

Numerous things happening. There’s also the advertising, and I was wondering as a big picture, what have, what has it been like to now go into a decade and beyond and what have been some challenges and what makes you optimistic? 

Hunter Noack: I think it’s it. It really is. It’s amazing that we’ve been able to do this for 10 years or going to our 11th season.

We have just a phenomenal team of people. You, the volunteers that it, there is so much, yes, we run as a business but it’s really fueled by people’s generosity. The, just the donations of time and money, they sustain the organization. And so , it’s a cool feeling to know that yes, we make money by selling tickets, but there’s so much more like Goodwill energy that.

That I feel keeps us like floating and lifted. And that provides a tremendous sense of community and like binds our team together in a way that makes it feel strong. It’s. I think after 10 years, I am sometimes wonder okay, should we be doing more? There’s so many more places to go.

Shouldn’t we be? I, I would like, on the one hand I would like to be. Have a larger geographic footprint. And so the challenge, one challenge is like navigating where do we go back and where and what places do we not go back to so that we can go to a new place. And it’s so hard to make that decision because every single place.

I don’t, I think this is true, but if not every single, certainly most places that we go, I feel like, okay, I wanna live here. I’m, I, I fall in love with each place and part of that is I want to, then I think it gets to that feeling that you spoke about, which is a slowness and a space to actually observe and then appreciate.

Where we are, and especially in landscapes where there is a lot of, where nature is thriving and there’s a lot of like biodiversity and then you add like a human element. And when things seem when it seems like there’s synergy and beauty and diversity. It’s like that gives me the feeling like I, I want, I wanna participate in that in that dance.

And I want other people to like, to see this and to feel this. It’s hard to not go back to some places. Also because we build friendships and relationships in every place that we go. And and that’s a big part of a big part of the fun and the beauty of this project is the di like the broad.

Cross section of people that come to a show. So at our, on average, about half of the people are coming from more than 50 miles away and half the people are local. So it creates this like wonderful and unusual situation where you have locals and visitors together. Both really focused on appreciating the landscape that they’re in.

I am the, I’m like the focus of the show, but it’s different than a regular concert where, you know, whether, I suppose if you’re at Red Rocks or if you’re in another kind of like. Outdoor amphitheater, setting a big or even a really special concert hall, like the space is a part, is a big part of the experience, but the focus, most of the experience together is focused on the performer.

And within a landscape, I’d say more of the focus is on that shared experience of the landscape and what. Kind of me as almost like a tour guide or a, a soundtrack background guide does to help people connect with that landscape. I love looking out into the audience and seeing the, like at the Alvo Desert, there’s the people who.

The cowboys and ranchers that are actually working on the ranches that we’re on and the adjoining ranches. Then you have people that have driven eight hours from Portland and have never been, never been this far out. Never been to as remote an area as this. It’s a whole new world for them.

You have other people, that have, driven for long distances, but where it’s like a place that they, it’s like a pilgrimage spot that they come to every year. And so you have all, you have so many different kind of perspectives ex together experiencing this landscape and it has a really.

Unifying effect. And whereas normally there are, we put up all kinds of barriers and assumptions based on where we’re from. That the, and those kind of just, there maybe still there on, on some level for some people, but I would say like broadly speaking, people are just people and we’re suddenly like all, like at the Alor Ranch, they, they have food and we’re all sitting around having drinks and barbecue together and, it feels really neighborly. And that’s, I just, I love that. So it’s, I guess a challenge is part of me wants to just be on the road.

All the time because it is really rewarding. And, but I, we, at this point, we, it doesn’t quite work for us to be out on the road all the time 

Kim Allchurch Flick: well, and there’s weather considerations and Sure, yeah. Yeah. Amazing things. And that’s another thing is seasonality is. Part of where you might go.

And as you were speaking, I was thinking about how truly nonpartisan this has been and going to some of these towns, talking with people, going to buy a sandwich some somewhere, and I say, Hey, I am here with you, the landscape. Are you going tonight? And people say, yeah, I heard about that. I’ll go if I can.

And. Then seeing them come in or if they haven’t heard about it, but say, yeah, I have the night off. I could go. And I said come talk to me. I’ll be in the orange hat. And the delight of seeing them actually show up. The other thing that’s interesting is how people start to, to brag about how many, In A Landscapes they’ve gone to.

And it’s delightful because people will come and say, that was my third one and I’m. I said, keep coming back. They’re all, and they’re all different and everything’s different because even when you play two nights in the same spot, the sky is different. The right people are different.

The, there’s always something. And the music is so keenly beautiful, is the way I can describe it. Yet nothing’s the same because you have a beautiful repertoire that takes people all over the world and into all different moods. And the other thing that’s interesting about it is people sit where they wanna sit.

It’s not like a concert hall where you can be super close to someone, almost literally rubbing elbows and never talk to them, never get to know them. And for me, there’s also that sense of claustrophobia, where in a landscape is. Exact opposite of that. You can be close to people wandering with them. The knowing glance is part of it is really something and people feeling connection and if the place is right, people take their shoes off and connect even deeper with the land while they’re listening and are grounded.

And in a way it’s a, everywhere the piano goes, to me it’s a sense of. Giving healing to the people, the animals and the grounding in that particular place, and it leaves a memory.

Hunter Noack: That’s amazing. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: It is. It is amazing and I, I really want I’m so glad to have you a guest on the podcast for people to know a, that in the landscape exists and it’s shining a spotlight on places some of us have never heard of. And the other thing, it’s done for me in the beginning, just working. I didn’t have time to go to very many, but going just around Oregon, but going, getting off the freeway and going through all these little back roads and little towns and visiting general stores and little cafes and getting to know people.

I think that’s another magical thing in the process of going to the concerts in a landscape. And you take us through places. To connect with people and slow down and really see what makes a state like Oregon. Oregon, yeah. It’s not the city of Portland. It’s, that’s the, my, that’s a part of it.

But the state and Northern California many of these places are, and the real nature of them, date back in people’s families and into local tribes as well. That’s a lot that shines a light on that. So what else would you like to add before we go to the final question? 

Hunter Noack: I can’t think of anything.

Kim Allchurch Flick: I’ll add that tickets are available at InALandscape.org. 

That’s, 

Hunter Noack: that’s a good idea. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah. And this year it’ll be Oregon, California, Washington State, Idaho, Montana, and Banff Canada. 

Hunter Noack: Yeah, 

Kim Allchurch Flick: maybe Wyoming 

Hunter Noack: and we will maybe be adding some in Utah.

Kim Allchurch Flick: I love that. Yeah. I know people in Utah. 

Hunter Noack: Yeah. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: With that, the final question is if you could have dinner with up to three people living or deceased, who would they be and why? 

Hunter Noack: Yeah, I think that, I feel like this is a good question because it changes every day and today I was thinking, or in this moment, the three people that are just coming to mind, which should be a hilarious dinner party Leonard Bernstein, because.

He just, especially like if it was like an older Leonard Bernstein Nina Simone and Mary Magdalene,

either, either Mary Magdalene or Judas. I feel like, yeah, one of I, there, I just have so many questions for all three of them and I feel like they would all be really, it would make if we could have a long dinner party, that would be ideal. Maybe with wine.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Wow. I’m so intrigued. You said Mary Magdalene or Judas? I mean, not that 

Hunter Noack: Judas. I wanna get I wanna get his perspective. Mary Magdalene, I feel like she just probably had the most. Interesting life of all of the disciples. And there’s just a lot of lore around her. And, same thing.

Or Jesus. There’s, I just wanna talk to more people that were actually in some of those stories. And then, I, I think Nina Simone is one of the greatest artists of all time. And Leonard Bernstein. Just,

I, he there’s something like about, he was in the tradition of classical music, but I love I think we, if we could have a Leonard Bernstein doing the young people’s concerts again. I’m curious like the context in which that idea came to be.

And he just, he’s like irreverent and funny and charming and ridiculous. So I thought that would be a good addition. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: That is lovely. And it ties into what you were saying in the beginning about those funny, ridiculous. Plays that you were in and thinking about how to bring people down to a base level.

And when you’re talking about Leonard Bernstein, it also reminds me how many children go to in landscapes and I watch them and I watch them dance and I watch them play with headphones and I watch them break away from their parents and go pick a flower or something. Yeah. Yeah. So you, I think you, in a way, you’ve got some Leonard Bernstein in you as well, because the children are there, and that to me is critically important for the future.

Hunter Noack: Yeah, 

Kim Allchurch Flick: They’re rolling in the grass and listening at the same time. It has been an honor. Thank you so much everyone. Thanks for listening to the Mighty Measure Podcast. Be safe out there.