Seth Warner.

The BatesDowntown concert series presents an evening of classic country, folk, blues and other roots music by the Seth Warner Trio and the duo Day for Night at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 11, at 22 Park St.

Admission is free, but tickets are required, available at batestickets.com. To learn more, contact 207-786-6163 or olinarts@bates.edu.

The Seth Warner Trio plays folk, blues, Americana and old-time country. Guitarist-singer Warner, whose performances have been described as “ethereal” by the Portland Press Herald, has appeared at venues as diverse as the Stockholm Folk and Blues Connection, the Boston Early Music Festival, WGBH radio and recently at Joe’s Pub in New York City.

Highlights from his two-decade career include performances and collaborations with the Parker String Quartet and tours with the extraordinary blues singer Francine Reed. Warner manages the Olin Arts Center at Bates and has served as executive producer for several internationally acclaimed classical recordings.

Also in the trio are Michael Desrosier, who plays electric guitar, and Tim Webb, who performs on upright bass.

Day for Night.

Hailing from northwest Portland, Doug Hubley and Gretchen Schaefer are Day for Night. They support their harmony singing with guitar and mandolin. Their inspirations include Merle Haggard, Webb Pierce, Lefty Frizzell, George Jones and some of country’s premiere brother acts — the Stanley Brothers, the Everly Brothers, the Louvin Brothers.

The pair, who first made music together in the 1990s as members of the Cowlix and the Boarders, combine wry humor with a bedrock reverence for musical tradition as they cover about three decades’ worth of country music — in addition to a growing list of Hubley originals, including “Bittersweet” and “The Ceiling,” both available on their ReverbNation site. “The Ceiling” is also for sale on iTunes.

Day for Night is a popular attraction at the annual Cornish Apple Festival and performs regularly at the Portland wine bar Blue. The band has also appeared at the Cornish Inn; the Frog and Turtle Gastropub, Westbrook; the Last Church on the Left, Portland; and in a variety of Bates productions.

Like Warner, Hubley is a Bates employee — college writer in the Bates Communications Office.

Renowned singer-songwriter Jonathan Edwards, at right, performs with Lecturer in Music Tom Snow during Snow’s “Popular Composition and Arranging” class in March 2013. Photograph by Michael Bradley/Bates College.

In back-to-back concerts, Bates College presents Jonathan Edwards, the singer-songwriter who first found fame with the 1972 hit “Sunshine,” and jazz saxophonist Wayne DeLano.

Edwards, known for shows that one reviewer praised for their blend of “remarkable singing, storytelling and wit,” performs at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 14, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. He will be joined by Maine pianist Tom Snow and two Bates a cappella singing groups. (Read more about the Edwards-Snow collaboration.)

The Wayne DeLano Quartet offers a BatesDowntown performance at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 15, at 22 Park St. in Lewiston.

Admission to Edwards is $20 in advance or $25 on the day of the show, available at batestickets.com. Free tickets for the first 50 students and seniors will be available by advance reservation at 8 a.m. Wednesday, March 13, by emailing olinarts@bates.edu.

Admission to the DeLano performance is free, but reservations are required, available at batestickets.com. For more information about either concert, please call 207-786-6135.

• More about the Jonathan Edwards performance.
• More about the Wayne DeLano Quartet performance.

Red Baraat

Opening with Ethiopian-born Finnish singer-songwriter Mirel Wagner and concluding with the college’s own Jazz Band, the autumn 2012 concert season at Bates College represents the best of music from Bates and the world.

The season includes the debut of the Olin Arts Alive concert series featuring internationally renowned and emerging performers.

Classical music highlights include visits by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the contemporary music ensemble Momenta Quartet, performing a piece by a Bates composer. In addition, pianist Frank Glazer, an artist in residence at the college since 1980, will offer a season-long series comprising music from his most cherished Bates programs.

In a joint presentation with L/A Arts — one of several undertaken by Bates this academic year — rhythm and blues singer Francine Reed returns to Olin a year after her smash appearance here. Other familiar faces include the Bates College Orchestra and College Choir. And new to the college is Red Baraat, a most exciting ensemble combining the sounds of South Asia and the New World.

With exceptions as noted, most concerts are open to the public free of charge and take place in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. To buy tickets, please visit batestickets.com. For more information or to arrange tickets for the free concerts, please contact olinarts@bates.edu or 207-786-6135.

Here’s the season schedule:

Mirel Wagner (7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 12): Born in Ethiopia, raised in Finland, this folk and blues singer is known for her minimalist style and emotive depth. Note: This Olin Arts Alive series concert takes place at Keigwin Amphitheater at Lake Andrews, next to the Olin Arts Center. Rain site: Olin Concert Hall. Learn more.

Pianist Frank Glazer in 2006. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Frank Glazer Retrospective, Program I (7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 14): The renowned pianist begins a season of music from his most cherished Bates programs. Tonight: Handel, Mozart, Debussy, Chopin and Beethoven (Pathétique). Admission: $10 per concert or all eight programs at $65 per seat, at batestickets.com. Proceeds benefit the Frank & Ruth Glazer Scholarship Fund. A limited number of free tickets are available for seniors and students; contact olinarts@bates.eduor 207-786-6163.

BatesDowntown (5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 28): The college’s informal series of free downtown concerts resumes with an artist TBA. Note: The venue is 22 Park St., Lewiston.

An Evening of Chamber Music (7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29): Four friends — Bates pianist Jim Parakilas, violinist Mary Hunter, cellist Steve Witkin and violist Heather Cook — perform Mozart, Fauré and Dvořák, including the beloved “Dumky” piano trio. Free, but tickets required; contact olinarts@bates.edu.

Red Baraat (7:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 30): Driven by bandleader Sunny Jain’s dhol, a North Indian drum, this uproarious Brooklyn band blends Brit-Indi Bhangra with funky New World brass. Admission $15/ $10, available at batestickets.com. Free tickets are available for the first 100 seniors or students. To reserve, please email olinarts@bates.edu. Learn more.

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 6): One of America’s most compelling pianists, Jeremy Denk is among the six CMS players in an Olin Arts Alive performance. Featured is music by Bruch, Brahms and Dohnányi. Admission $15/ $10, available at batestickets.com. Free tickets are available for the first 100 seniors or students. To reserve, please email olinarts@bates.edu. Learn more.

Francine Reed

Frank Glazer Retrospective, Program II (7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 12): See Program I, above, for artist and admission details. Tonight: Schoenberg’s Six Short Pieces, along with music by Schubert, Brahms and Chopin.

Francine Reed (7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 13): Olin Arts Alive and L/A Arts present an evening with this blues, gospel and jazz singer. A hit at Olin a year ago, the openhearted, full-throated Reed is the widely recognized voice in Lyle Lovett’s Large Band, but has a powerhouse career in her own right. Admission: $15 / $10, increasing to $20 /$10 on the day of the show. Available at batestickets.com. Learn more.

Alexandre Tharaud (7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 21). Olin Arts Alive presents the up-and-coming French pianist. “Tharaud is dazzlingly nimble-fingered and often admirably sensitive, without romanticizing,” wrote the BBC. A program of Scarlatti, Ravel, Chopin and Liszt. Admission $12, available at batestickets.com; free tickets are available for the first 100 seniors and students. Email olinarts@bates.edu to reserve. Learn more.

Rollin’ to Olin(12:30 p.m. on three Thursdays: Nov. 1, 8 and 15). The public is invited to this free arts-literacy program for local schoolchildren. A Bates College Museum of Art presentation takes place at 12:30 p.m., followed by a mini-concert from 1 to 1:30.

Europa Galante

Europa Galante (7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 2): Olin Arts Alive presents a Baroque music ensemble from Italy, founded and still directed by violinist Fabio Biondi. The program “Apotheosis and Folia” includes music by Vivaldi, Couperin, Mascitti, Corelli and C.P.E. Bach. Admission $12, available at batestickets.com. Free tickets are available to the first 100 seniors and students; reserve by emailing olinarts@bates.edu. Learn more.

Frank Glazer Retrospective, Program III (7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 9): See Program I, above, for artist and admission information. Tonight: Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, along with music by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin.

Bates College Orchestra (7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 10): Hiroya Miura directs the ensemble in a program including Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92. Free, but tickets required.

Bates College Choir (8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 30-Dec. 1): John Corrie directs the choir in a program TBA. Free, but tickets required.

Frank Glazer Retrospective, Program IV (3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 2): See Program I, above, for artist and admission information. Tonight: music by Franck, Weber, Gershwin, Barber, Copland and Brahms.

Momenta Quartet

Momenta Quartet (7:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 4): Olin Arts Alive and the Bates College Museum of Art present this quartet whose repertoire ranges widely from the classics to contemporary — such as tonight’s premiere by Bates composer Hiroya Miura, commissioned for the museum’s exhibition Starstruck. Also on the program: music by Debussy, Kee Yong Chong and Jason Kao Hwang. Admission $12, available at batestickets.com. Free tickets are available to the first 100 seniors and students; reserve by emailing olinarts@bates.edu. Learn more.

Bates College Jazz Band (7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 5) Tom Snow leads the band in arrangements for large and small ensembles, and genres from big band to bossa nova to funk. Free, but tickets required.

Steve Grover

The Bates College music series BatesDowntown continues this spring with jazz and country concerts by Maine musicians.

Lewiston native and noted jazz musician Steve Grover is joined by bassist Greg Loughman for a performance at 5 p.m. Friday, April 6.

Day for Night, a classic-country duo from Portland, performs at 5 p.m. Friday, May 4.

BatesDowntown concerts take place at 22 Park St. (the former Maple Room) and are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Grover is a pianist, drummer, educator and composer. He studied at Berklee and the University of Maine at Augusta, where he now teaches; he is also a member of the applied music faculty at Bates.

In 1985 he composed “Blackbird Suite,” a jazz interpretation of Wallace Stevens’ poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” This composition earned him first place in the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz/BMI Jazz Composers Competition in 1994.

Grover has performed with the Friends of Jazz, the late and legendary guitarist Lenny Breau, pianist Chris Neville and the renowned Dizzy Gillespie, among many others. In 2009, his band was named “Best Jazz Act” and “One of the Ten Most Influential Bands of The Last Ten Years” by the Portland Phoenix.

His catalog of recordings as bandleader includes Blackbird Suite, the Beatles tribute Flying and last year’s Statement, an all-original collection recorded with his quintet.

Known as one of the Midwest’s most accomplished bassists, Loughman is now a New England resident and faculty member at the University of Maine at Augusta and Bowdoin College. He has toured widely and worked with, among others, Grammy-nominated pianist Phillip Aaberg, guitarist Mimi Fox, Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Carlos Malta, jazz violinist Christian Howes, singer Patti Page and the Jimmy Dorsey Big Band.

Day for Night consists of Doug Hubley and Gretchen Schaefer, who perform classic county harmonies accompanied by guitar and mandolin. Their music is inspired by the big names in “brother acts” — Stanley, Louvin, Everly — as well as Merle Haggard, Webb Pierce, Gene Clark and the duet work of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris.

Day for Night has performed at venues including the Portland wine bar Blue, the Cornish Apple Festival, the Frog & Turtle Gastropub and a variety of events at Bates, where Hubley works in the Communications Office. The pair worked previously with Howling Turbines, the Boarders and the Cowlix.

Amos Libby and Eric LaPerna of Okbari Middle Eastern Ensemble.

The Okbari Middle Eastern Ensemble brings music from the rich tapestry of Turkish, Arabic and Armenian culture to the BatesDowntown concert series in a performance at 5 p.m. Friday, March 2, at 22 Park St. (the former Maple Room).

The performance is open to the public at no cost. The series will continue with concerts on the first Fridays of April and May. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

The Okbari Middle Eastern Ensemble is Amos Libby (oudist, singer), Eric LaPerna (percussionist), Michael Gallant (violinist) and Carl Dimow (flutist).

Okbari’s repertoire encompasses Ottoman Turkish classical compositions, rural Turkish folk and devotional songs, Arabic classical and folk music, and dance music from the Armenian and Turkish immigrant diasporas.

The ensemble appears as a duo, trio and a quartet, and has performed at venues throughout New England, the East Coast and the Midwest, including prestigious institutions such as the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, Alwan for the Arts in New York City and the 2009 Chicago Arabesque Festival.

Okbari also performs with world-renowned Armenian-American clarinet virtuoso Mal Barsamian, and has performed in Istanbul with the Kemani Serkan and Rumeli Meyhane Fasil ensembles.
Three members of the band studied or regularly performed with the late, revered oud master and composer Alan Shavarsh Bardezbanian, a member of the Bates class of 1973.

Libby, a student of Bardezbanian, travels to Turkey to study Ottoman classical and Turkish contemporary art music. He is co-director of the Bowdoin College Middle Eastern Ensemble and an adjunct instructor of oud technique at Bowdoin, and teaches oud at Bates.

LaPerna was the lead percussionist of Bardezbanian’s Middle Eastern Ensemble and is a founding member of Okbari and the Alhan Arabic Ensemble. He is director of the Bowdoin College Middle Eastern Music Ensemble and adjunct instructor of hand percussion at Bowdoin, and is also a member of the Bates applied music faculty.

Gallant has studied Arabic classical violin with renowned Palestinian violin and oud master Simon Shaheen and was the violinist for Bardezbanian’s Middle Eastern Ensemble.

Dimow is an eclectic musician whose performances on flutes and guitar include classical, jazz, klezmer, blues and traditional folk music. He has appeared in performances and school residencies in the U.S., Europe and Central America. He also performs with the Casco Bay Tummlers klezmer band, the Kolosko-Dimow Duo and the World Flute Trio. He is a member of the applied music faculty at Colby College and teaches in the Portland area.

BatesDowntown concerts take place at 22 Park St. (the former Maple Room) and are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Stein has performed throughout the world with orchestras, chamber music ensembles and as soloist. He is particularly well-known from his work with a previous incarnation of the Maine-based DaPonte String Quartet.

Stein now appears with the Atlantic Piano Trio and is concertmaster of the Maine Music Society. With oboist Kathleen McNerney, he founded the VentiCordi (“winds and strings”) music festival in Kennebunk in 2009. Since 2003, he has directed the historic Arcady Music Festival in Bar Harbor.

He is on the faculty of Bates and Bowdoin colleges and has taught at New England Conservatory’s Preparatory Division, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of Maryland at College Park and the New England Suzuki Institute.

Naruse holds master’s degrees in music performance and music instruction from the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. She has performed throughout the world in recitals and piano competitions including the Hyogo Piano Competition in Japan (silver prize) and the International Mozart Wettbewerb in Salzburg, Austria.

In 2002, Naruse moved to the United States to study under Frank Glazer, the renowned pianist and artist in residence at Bates. She has performed solo recitals at Bates and the University of Maine campuses in Farmington and Augusta; played concerts with Glazer, the Portland String Quartet and the DaPonte quartet; performed piano concertos by Beethoven, Mozart and Rachmaninoff with the Augusta Symphony; and recently concluded concert tours of France and Japan.

Naruse is a member of the applied music faculties at Bates, the University of Maine at Farmington, the Portland Conservatory of Music and the Bay Chamber School, and has a teaching studio in Hallowell.

Pianist Tom Snow and guitarist John Smedley play jazz at 5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26.

Violinist Dean Stein and pianist Chiharu Naruse perform music by J.S. Bach and Beethoven at 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 3.

Both BatesDowntown concerts take place at 22 Park St. (the former Maple Room) and are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

The BatesDowntown series “came from the simple idea of trying to branch out and essentially ‘share’ the music we have here on campus out in the community,” says Seth Warner, the college’s concert hall manager.

“We hope we attract an audience that might not normally visit our campus — but also hope we can capture the attention of members of the Bates community who’d like to know more about the people, places and things that make Lewiston-Auburn the ‘L/A’ of the East.”

Snow, the director of the Bates Jazz Band, has recorded on the Telarc and Origin labels and has three CDs as a leader: Northern Standard Time (1997), Christmas at Mast Cove (2001) and Some Other Time (2007). His career has included wide-ranging tours to Australia and throughout the United States with noted Irish tenor John McNally, and he frequently accompanies folk singer Jonathan Edwards.

Physics professor and jazz guitarist John Smedley.

Smedley, a Bates physics professor, is a jazz guitarist known for performances solo and with the Three Point Trio, the Tom Snow Trio and other combos. A specialist in atomic physics, he also teaches musical acoustics and the physics of electronic sound, and offers a jazz guitar course that provides a historical survey of the genre and individual instruction on the guitar.

Violinist Stein has performed throughout the world with orchestras, chamber music ensembles and as soloist. He is particularly well-known from his work with a previous incarnation of the Maine-based DaPonte String Quartet.

Stein now performs with the Atlantic Piano Trio and is concertmaster of the Maine Music Society. With oboist Kathleen McNerney, he founded the VentiCordi (“winds and strings”) music festival in Kennebunk in 2009. Since 2003, he has directed the historic Arcady Music Festival in Bar Harbor.

Stein is on the faculty of Bates and Bowdoin colleges and has taught at New England Conservatory’s Preparatory Division, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of Maryland at College Park and the New England Suzuki Institute.

Naruse holds master’s degrees in music performance and music instruction from the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. She has performed throughout the world in recitals and piano competitions including the Hyogo Piano Competition in Japan (silver prize) and the International Mozart Wettbewerb in Salzburg, Austria.

In 2002, Naruse moved to the United States to study under Frank Glazer, the renowned pianist and artist in residence at Bates. She has performed solo recitals at Bates and the University of Maine campuses in Farmington and Augusta; played concerts with Glazer, the Portland String Quartet and the DaPonte quartet; performed piano concertos by Beethoven, Mozart and Rachmaninoff with the Augusta Symphony; and recently concluded concert tours of France and Japan.

Naruse is a member of the applied music faculties at Bates, the University of Maine at Farmington, the Portland Conservatory of Music and the Bay Chamber School, and has a teaching studio in Hallowell.