November Encore Recital at Hollywood Ballroom

The last Encore Recital of 2025 was held at the Hollywood Ballroom in Silver Spring, Maryland, on Sunday, November 16th. 

Richard Zierdt, co-owner of the Ballroom and an active member of AMSF, kindly invited us to present a recital at his beautiful venue and to enjoy performing on their stunning Steinway D piano. 

Many Encore Recitals take place at churches or retirement communities, so they have a built-in audience, or at least one that frequents the location and may learn about the performance from an in-house newsletter. The Hollywood Ballroom is spacious, has good acoustics and is well-appointed. But it doesn’t have a regular audience, at least not on Sunday afternoons. So we wondered if we would attract much of a crowd.

We were able to get a free notice about the concert into the November issue of The Beacon newspaper, however. At least partly due to that, we had a relatively strong turnout of 32 guests, plus eight performers, making it our second-largest attendance at an Encore Recital in several years. 

The program was especially varied, ranging from Bach to Kapustin, with plenty of Chopin and a sprinkling of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Debussy. 

Richard Zierdt opened the program with Chopin’s Ballade No. 4 in F minor. 

He was followed by Deborah Birnbaum, playing a Beethoven Bagatelle, but also something rather different for an Encore Recital: the second movement of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The orchestra part was performed by expert teacher and collaborative pianist Gina DiMedio Marrazza, former director of the Levine School of Music, using an electronic keyboard also provided by our friends at the Hollywood Ballroom. 

Mark Ross performed the first of Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words” (Book One, No. 1), as well as his own arrangement of a beloved jazz standard from the 1950s, “Misty.” 

The 20th century theme was continued by Stuart Rosenthal, who performed “Oblivion,” one of Piazzolla’s most popular pieces (originally written for a film score), as well as an original composition, “Nocturne Habanera.” 

The second half was again introduced by Chopin, with the “Heroic Polonaise” in Ab Major performed by Jung Yeon Kim. 

Claudette Sikora followed with Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 9, No. 1, and “Ave Maria,” a melody that French Romantic composer Charles Gounod superimposed over J.S. Bach’s Prelude No. 1 in C major. 

Eli Jacks performed four well-known numbers, starting with Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” “Moment Musical” by Schubert, a Waltz by Brahms (Op. 39, No. 15) and Debussy’s “Arabesque #1.”

Kuo-Wei Wang closed out our program with 20th century and 21st century works: “Liebeslied” by Josef Suk and Nicolai Kapustin’s Sonatina, Op. 100 (written in 2000). 

Our audience enjoyed mingling with the performers afterward, and enjoyed a nice spread of wine and cheese and other snacks, provided by both Hollywood Ballroom and AMSF.

The next Encore Recital will take place at 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 15th at St. Columba’s Episcopal Church in Northwest DC. Members who would like to perform at the venue, which also features a Steinway grand, should email Stuart Rosenthal at srosenthal@amsfperform.org.

Program