Park Music Beauty
We aim to create a flourishing network of extraordinary musicians in beautiful public spaces everywhere.
About
For 11 seasons, during the warm months in Ashland, Oregon’s award-winning Lithia Park, Daniel Austin Sperry has performed five days a week, a couple of hours a day, for thousands of visitors and local residents. Over time, he has recognized that the emotional healing, solace and delight that have been generated by these performances goes far beyond what he had previously experienced playing in symphonies and chamber ensembles. As a result, he founded Park Music Beauty in the Fall of 2022, to begin the process of orienting younger musicians to the possibilities of offering their musical gifts in this unusual, culturally-expansive way, and developing a directory of public venues suitable for such community performances, around the country and world.
All over the world, young people join the great tradition of learning to perform beautiful music, through classical traditions that have come to be revered in concert halls everywhere. But rarely does this beautiful music spill out into public spaces for many reasons, but more than any other, an economic one. And yet, when people hear such music in a public space, especially when they have a chance to sit and listen, they feel moved to support that performer. It is one of the most fundamental acts of civic generosity, that when we see someone offering such beauty to all unselfishly, we want to affirm that with our action.
We want you to know why we are doing this…
And people are hungry for connection, community, a place to come for a moment of respite from the various kinds of struggle and overload we all face today. America’s public parks are an immense resource of possibility for providing consistent performances of beautiful music for the public to enjoy. Taking the example and learning of cellist and composer, Daniel Austin Sperry, Park Music Beauty aims to connect this hunger for connection and community with the passion that extraordinary musicians have to share their gift while flourishing through that process.
