Last Tuesday evening I shared an astonishing musical event with long-time friend Pepper Trail – a concert by pianist Hunter Noack on a knoll close to the top of Mt. Ashland. He performed on a Steinway lodged on a wooden trailer that was hauled up the dirt road next to the ski lodge to the ‘bunny’ knoll where beginners learn to ski. The audience trudged up to the site or took a short lift ride, carrying chairs and wearing warm clothes. Hunter is a young Oregonian who is classically trained and has performed widely, as I learned from his website. He also has a great love for the western wildlands, and has combined his two passions in a unique way. The event was a feature of “In a Landscape”, an NGO that is his brainchild (https://www.inalandscape.org/). Its mission is to provide classical music in the wild, and right now the range is all of Oregon. Here is an exerpt from the website:
IN A LANDSCAPE: Classical Music in the Wild is an outdoor concert series in stunning landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. We bring a 9-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 can explore the landscape, wander through secret glens, lie in sunny meadows, and roam old growth forests.
Hunter and the piano travel all over Oregon all summer long, and the recitals are held in amazing places. Although new to me, they have a wide following and the one scheduled for Mt. Ashland sold out so fast a second was added.
When Pepper called me about the concert I was concerned about being able to get up to the knoll, as my walkability is severely diminished, but the I figured if a Steinway could make its way there so could I. But when we arrived at the lift I stood and looked at it and wondered. A slow-moving wooden two-seater that never stoppd was creaking along and getting on and off looked very problematic. But just then a young employee of the ski area came up to us and asked if we would like a ride up the hill in a car. Wonderful solution – safe, simple, no pressure. Sometime my bad hip can provide benefits I don’t anticipate. The one problem was that once seated I stayed put, making my photos all from the same place and thus monotonous.
The music was simply lovely, and the headphones provided sound of concert hall quality. The only sounds from our surroundings were a gentle breeze and an occasional distant bird call. The pieces ranged from Beethoven to John Cage, and Hunter introduced each one. The most unusual was a movement from the Ravel Piano Concerto in G, with the orchestral part piped into our headphones to accompany the piano.
Interspersed were poems read by Pepper, a much admired and well-loved Ashland poet who has several published chapbooks and was a finalist for the Oregon Poetry Prize in 2016. Shortly afterwards he wrote a poem about the evening which is a memorable token to the event. It will be in a future book, I am sure. Here is one which he read:
PONDEROSA
This tree is a library
The great trunk a tight-rolled scroll
Its bark layer upon layer of scribbled sheets
Pressed together, holding their truths
Close against rain, sun, and fire
Deep furrows of loss erode the text
Channel the bark, diminish what is written
But each season, life writes a new report
Records, with incised lines and curving figures
Selections from the infinite world of incident
In a perfect, fractal code
In characters of shape, shade, color, relief
No two alike, sepia, ash, cinnamon, ochre
An alphabet infinite and direct
Signifying just what has been endured
At the foot of the tree, a mound of discarded letters
Each puzzle-shaped, indecipherable
Meanings once held, now let go
Not renounced but outgrown
Each leaving behind its trace on the page beneath
I spread my hand upon the sun-warmed bark
Sense, through my palm, the greatness of that epic book
But must content myself, barbarian that I am
With the beauty of the lines alone
The magic contained in words unread
A marvelous, magical musical evening.