Sunset Stories

For Suzanne Mudge, Sunset Center holds more than four decades of musical memories.

Suzanne began performing with the Carmel Bach Festival in 1984, when Sunset was a very different building. She remembers the theater before its major renovation and also performed at Sunset with the Monterey Symphony in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

As a brass musician with the Bach Festival, one of Suzanne's assignments was performing Tower Music before Main Concerts. The musicians often played on the Terrace, but on Sunday afternoons they sometimes performed from a second-story window overlooking what was then the parking lot.

That window is still there, although today it opens onto the foyer.

"When I look up at it nowadays, it takes me back to the people I played with," Suzanne recalls, remembering fellow musicians — some still living and others who are gone.

Along with that Sunset window, the Mission tower provided another memorable setting for the musicians' Tower Music performances.

Suzanne has performed with several organizations at Sunset over the years, but the Carmel Bach Festival remains especially meaningful to her.

In 2016, during Carmel's centennial year, she even made Sunset Center itself part of the story for the Bach Festival Family Concert. Leonard and Rasmus were tasked with solving the mystery of missing instruments, with the adventure unfolding through Sunset's trap doors, hidden rooms near Carpenter Hall and an encounter with a madcap percussionist. The audience joined in solving the mystery, making the building itself part of the performance.

Today, Suzanne sees Sunset as Carmel's cultural center — a place where generations of musicians, dancers and actors have performed. She appreciates its intimacy and distinctive architecture, from its steep rooflines to its copper downspouts, as well as the improvements that have created better spaces for performers.

As Sunset looks toward its next century, Suzanne hopes it will continue to be home to its historic presenting partners, welcome exceptional artists and receive strong support from the community it serves.

After more than 40 years of performances, Suzanne's memories reflect something uniquely Sunset: a building that holds its own history while continuing to create new memories every time the curtain rises.