The Borromeo String Quartet makes a return visit to Bates.

Called “simply the best there is” by The Boston Globe, the critically acclaimed Borromeo String Quartet returns to Bates College for a performance of music by Schubert, Schoenberg and others at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 29, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

General admission tickets are $6, available at www.batestickets.com. Free admission is offered to the first 100 seniors or students; please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

The quartet returns to Bates for an intensive two-day residency. On the 29th, the audience will be invited to shape the order and content of the program.

The Borromeo String Quartet is one of the most sought-after ensembles of its kind in the world. Audiences and critics alike champion the foursome’s revealing explorations of Beethoven, Bartok, Schoenberg, Shostakovich and Golijov. Their ability to make even the most challenging contemporary repertoire approachable and enlightening has become a hallmark.

They perform at the world’s most illustrious concert halls and music festivals, and continue long-standing residencies at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum (“one of the defining experiences of civilization in Boston,” according to The Boston Globe), the Tenri Cultural Institute and the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music, where it has been the official quartet in residence for 17 years.

In April 2007 the Borromeo Quartet was honored in New York with a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and in 2006 the Aaron Copland House honored the Borromeo’s commitment to performing contemporary music by creating the Borromeo Quartet Award, an annual initiative that will premiere the work of important young composers to audiences internationally.

In 2003 the Borromeos made classical music history with its pioneering record label, The Living Archive, making it is possible to order on-demand DVDs and CDs of many of its concerts around the world, a feat only previously attempted in rock music. The series allows listeners the chance to explore in greater depth the music they have just heard in concert, as well as explore new and rarely performed works.

The Borromeo has enjoyed collaborations with composers John Cage, Gyorgy Ligeti, Gunther Schuller, Osvaldo Golijov, Steve Mackey, John Harbison, Leon Kirchner, Jennifer Higdon, Derek Bermel, Lior Navok and Lera Auerbach, among others.

The members of the quartet are violinists Nicholas Kitchen and Kristopher Tong, violist Mai Motobuchi and cellist Yeesun Kim. Learn more: www.borromeoquartet.com.

Hailed by The Boston Globe for its “fiercely committed performances,” the Parker String Quartet performs in a Bates College concert, also featuring renowned pianist Frank Glazer, at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 1, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Also in Olin, violinist Nicholas Kitchen and cellist Yeesun Kim of the Borromeo String Quartet join clarinetist Derek Bermel and pianist Bruce Brubaker to perform Messiaen’s seminal “Quatuor pour la fin du temps” (“Quartet for the End of Time”) at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 2.

Both concerts are open to the public free of charge, but tickets are required. For reservations, please call 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Glazer joins the Parker Quartet for Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in a program rounded out with works by Haydn, Stravinsky and Puccini. Equally at home in a celebrated concert hall or a downtown club, the Parker Quartet embraces opportunities to bring their performances to new audiences in non-traditional venues. The ensemble — violinists Daniel Chong and Karen Kim, cellist Kee-Hyun Kim and violist Jessica Bodner — challenge artificial boundaries by performing in bars and clubs nationwide, garnering media attention with features in Time Out NY, The Boston Globe, Chamber Music Magazine and Musical America.com.

The quartet’s 2007 debut CD (Zig Zag), featuring Bartok’s String Quartets Nos. 2 and 5, received high praise: “The Parkers’ Bartok spins the illusion of spontaneous improvisation . . . they have absorbed the language; they have the confidence to play freely with the music and the instinct to bring it off” (Gramophone). The ensemble’s upcoming release, on the Naxos label, is the complete string quartets of the late György Ligeti, due out in 2008-2009.

The four are all alumni of the New England Conservatory of Music. When asked the origin of the ensemble name, Kee-Hyun Kim explains: “We are named after the Omni Parker House, in Boston. We all came from different places, [and] when we first met it seemed fitting to choose a name that was such a landmark of Boston.

“The Parker House is not only the oldest hotel in Boston, it is the longest-running hotel in the U.S., and was made a landmark in 1855. It’s also the home to the creation of the Boston cream pie and Parker house rolls. Literary greats used to assemble here, including Hawthorne, Longfellow and Emerson.”

Kitchen, a founding member of the Borromeo quartet, is a recipient of the Albert Schweitzer Medallion for Artistry and the Presidential Scholar in the Arts Award. His musicianship was described by The New York Times as “thrilling, vibrant and captivating.” Also a founding member of the quartet, Kim has appeared with such renowned musicians as Joshua Bell, Christoph Eschenbach and Leon Fleisher.

Bermel won several major awards just in 2008, including the Alpert Award in the Arts for music, the American Music Center’s Trailblazer Award and a Koussevitzky Music Foundation grant. He performs as a founding member of the ensemble Music from Copland House along with Kitchen.

Brubaker, a pianist with a penchant for contemporary American music, is known for his innovative programming, in which he often combines music with other media.

Glazer, of Topsham, has been a resident artist at Bates since 1980. He is a musician ofinternational stature whose long career includes numerous recordings and premieres of contemporary music, his own television program in the 1950s and countless solo recitals and performances with orchestras and chamber ensembles, including the New England Piano Quartette, of which he was a founder.

Glazer was 21 when he made his New York debut at Town Hall on Oct. 20, 1936. That event (recreated at Bates on its 70th anniversary in 2006) marked the start of a performing career that finds this artist creatively robust in his 90s.