Powder Valley

Powder Valley featured 6 trailside stages and 14 performers with a hiking audience, with music inspired by the flora and fauna of the Missouri Department of Conservation’s Powder Valley stream-side Hickory Ridge trail. Over 250 hiking audience members heard new compositions written and premiered for the event inspired by Powder Valley’s resident birds, as well as percussion instruments inspired by the plants and animal life along the trail.

Audience members interacted with the professional performers at the trailside stages, playing water bells filled and tuned with stream water, playing a homemade instrument the ‘EcoPlinko’ played with stream pebbles, and hearing grand piano in a pavilion with Powder Valley’s birds and forest as the backdrop. Instruments included violin, cello, clarinet, flute, piano, saxophones, percussion, and bassoon, featuring world-class professional musicians of the St. Louis area including members of the SLSO and mainstay players on the international jazz scene. Missouri Department of Conservation naturalists presented hands-on activities about the Hickory Ridge trail’s flora and fauna alongside the musicians at every trailside stage.