Sunset Music and Arts: October, 2025

Information from Sunset Music and Arts continues to be “a sometime thing;” but, this past Sunday, I learned of two recitals that will take place at the end of this month. The first will involve a pianist giving duo performances with a baritone and a trumpet. The second will present a pianist who is also a composer.

Both of these will be evening performances, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Both of them have Web pages through which tickets may be purchased, and the hyperlinks to those pages will be attached to the dates. For those not familiar with this concert series, it takes place at the Incarnation Episcopal Church, which is located in the Sunset at 1750 29th Avenue. General admission will be $25 with a $20 rate for seniors and students. Specifics are as follows:

Poster design for the first of the two performances taking place this month (courtesy of Sunset Music and Arts)

Saturday, October 25: The pianist will be Gretchen Hull, who will accompany baritone Chad Runyon and trumpeter Jonathan Knight. The program will begin with a trio performance of “… to Cast a Shadow Again” by Eric Ewazen. The trumpet selections will be “Variations on the Agincourt Carol” by Gretchen Hull and Anthony Plog’s “Animal Ditties.” Runyon will sing a collection of songs compiled by John Jacob Niles and Thomas Merton.

Thursday, October 30: The principal composer on this solo piano recital by Tomasz Kamieniak will be Franz Liszt. The most familiar of the selections will be the S. 215 “Valse oubliée,” the first in that collection of waltzes. Liszt’s skill at transcription will be featured at the conclusion of the program with his S. 442 arrangement of the overture to Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser. More interesting may be the performance of S. 242, the nineteenth composition given the title “Magyar rapszódiák,” which became the first version of S. 244/8, the eight of the more familiar Hungarian Rhapsodies collection. The program will begin with two three-movement tongue-in-cheek compositions by Erik Satie, the first entitled Les Trois Valses distinguées de précieux dégoûté (the three distinguished waltzes of a jaded dandy), followed by Embryons desséchés (desiccated embryos). There will also be ballades by two lesser known composers, Walter Niemann (Opus 49) and Joachim Raff (Opus 74). The remaining composition on the program will be Charles-Valentin Alkan’s “En rhythme molossique” (in Molossian rhythm), the second of his Opus 39 collection of twelve études accounting for all of the minor keys.