The Forge: Irish flutist Nicole Rabata, bodhranist Anna Colliton, fiddler Cara Frankowicz and singer-harpist Maeve Gilchrist.

The first weekend of March will be a rich one at Bates College for music lovers, as an avant-garde duo, an up-and-coming Irish-style band and a program of Beethoven sonatas are all bound for the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall.

Combining flute with electronic and computer-based music, DuoInteraktiv performs at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 1.

Well-known to Maine audiences, violinist Dean Stein and pianist Chiharu Naruse perform the second of three concerts surveying Beethoven’s sonatas for those instruments at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 3. The program consists of Sonata No. 5 in F major (Op. 24, “Spring”); No. 10 in G major (Op. 96) and No. 6 in A major (Op. 30, No. 1). Read more about Stein and Naruse.

Also on March 3, at 7:30 p.m., is a performance by The Forge, a quartet based in the Northeast that “Celtic Sojourn” radio host Brian O’Donovan called “a bright new name in the American Irish music scene.”

The concert hall is located at 75 Russell St.

DuoInteraktiv: Reiner Krämer and Patricia Surman.

Admission to DuoInteraktiv is free, but tickets are required. Admission to Stein and Naruse is $10. Tickets to The Forge, part of Bates’ Olin Arts Alive series, are $12. For the latter two concerts, tickets are available at batestickets.com.

Limited numbers of free tickets are available to seniors and students by reservation for the Beethoven and Forge programs; please contact 207-786-6163 or olinarts@bates.edu. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

DuoInteraktiv: Based at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma, DuoInteraktiv creates and performs music that fuses the worlds of traditional acoustic instruments, electroacoustic principles and computer science into a single entity. This collaboration between computer operator and music theorist Reiner Krämer and flutist Patricia Surman was formed with the goal of bringing the little-performed works for flute and computer to an audience at large.

DuoInteraktiv received the 2011-12 Yamaha / College Music Society In-Residence Fellowship.

The Forge: The Forge is composed of bodhranist Anna Colliton; fiddlist Cara Frankowicz; harpist and vocalist Maeve Gilchrist; and flutist Nicole Rabata. They have appeared together throughout North America, Europe and Asia. As individual artists, they have performed with renowned performers such as the Chieftains, the Three Irish Tenors and Capercaille.

“A new band shows up on the scene and immediately seems destined to make an impact,” said WGBH-FM personality O’Donovan. “Paying homage to their traditional roots while creating something new.”

Chiharu Naruse and Dean Stein. Photograph by Michael Bradley/Bates College.

Two members of the Bates music faculty present the complete series of Beethoven sonatas for violin and piano in three concerts in the coming weeks.

Violinist Dean Stein and pianist Chiharu Naruse perform at 3 p.m. on two Sundays, Feb. 3 and March 3; and at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 12, all in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Admission per concert is $10, available at batestickets.com. Free tickets are available by reservation for the first 50 seniors or students; please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Maine-based musicians with international careers, Stein and Naruse have played together in larger chamber ensembles over the years but made their debut as a duo only last fall.

The February program includes the Sonata No. 7 in C minor (Op. 30, No. 2), which marks a transition to the composer’s mature style in scope, harmonic language and structure. The program also includes sonatas No. 4 in A minor (Op. 23); No. 8 in G major (Op. 30, No. 3); and Beethoven’s first violin and piano sonata, No. 1 in D major (Op. 12, No. 1).

In March, Naruse and Stein play the Sonata No. 5 in F major (Op. 24), nicknamed “Spring” because of what music writer John Henken called its “generally cheerful sense of zesty blossoming”; also, No. 10 in G major (Op. 96) and No. 6 in A major (Op. 30, No. 1).

The April program ends the series with the celebrated “Kreutzer” sonata (No. 9 in A major, Op. 47), known for its emotional power, as well as for the difficulty of the violin part. Also featured are No. 2 in A major (Op. 12, No. 2) and No. 3 in E-flat major (Op. 12, No. 3).

While Beethoven wrote these 10 works relatively early in his career, there’s no mistaking the sensibility behind them. “While you find his debt to his predecessors,” such as Haydn and Mozart, “you also find his stamp on the music right from the opening of the first sonata,” says violinist Stein.

“He has his own voice already. He has his own sense of humor already.”

Where other composers of the era tended to make the violin secondary to the piano in the sonata form, Beethoven treated the two as equal partners. “The way the instruments blend together, move apart and develop motivic ideas is pure Beethoven,” Stein says.

Naruse and Stein structured the three Bates programs such that each contains a particularly popular or otherwise outstanding work, and each represents a chronological mix.

And there was no choice, they add, about concluding the series in April with the “Kreutzer” sonata. Like Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Naruse says, the “Kreutzer” has musical themes that are utterly compelling. “It sticks in your mind and you don’t forget.”

With oboist and fellow Bates faculty member Kathleen McNerney, Stein is co-artistic director of the VentiCordi Chamber Music Festival in Kennebunkport. He is also on the Bowdoin College faculty, performs with the Atlantic Piano Trio and is concertmaster of the Maine Music Society. For the past year Stein has regularly performed as guest first violinist with the Portland String Quartet.

A native of Japan, Naruse moved to the United States to study with Bates artist-in-residence Frank Glazer in 2002. She has toured France and Japan, and in Maine has been a featured artist at the Ocean Park Music Festival and the Franco-American Heritage Center.

In summer 2012, she performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in four Maine locations with Maine Pro Musica. Naruse also teaches at the Portland Conservatory of Music, where she is the director of the professional division.

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.

The DaPonte String Quartet, bassist Richard Hartshorne and pianist Chiharu Naruse join forces for two of chamber music’s best-loved works at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 14, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, Bates College, 75 Russell St.

The program comprises Dvorák’s quartet No. 12 in F major, Op. 96 (“American”) and Schubert’s Piano Quintet in A major, Op. 114, D. 667 (“Trout”). Admission is free, but tickets required. For more information, contact this olinarts@bates.edu or 207-786-6135.

The members of the DaPonte quartet are cellist Myles Jordan, violist Kirsten Monke, and violinists Lydia Forbes and Ferdinand “Dino” Liva. Founded in Philadelphia in 1991, the quartet first came to Maine in 1995 on a Rural Residency Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and Chamber Music America.

Unlike many artists who undertake residencies in rural communities, the DaPonte musicians and their families put down roots in Maine. Today the quartet is a pillar of the state’s chamber music community. Profiled in The New York Times and on CBS Sunday Morning, the foursome has an active performing schedule and is known for its youth education programs.

Naruse is a member of the applied music faculties at Bates, the University of Maine Farmington, the Portland Conservatory of Music and the Bay Chamber School. A native of Japan, she studied with renowned pianist Frank Glazer, an artist in residence at Bates, following her move to the U.S. in 2002. In addition to her work as a performer, she is a music teacher, chamber music coach and music competition adjudicator and accompanist.

An internationally renowned double bassist, Hartshorne was a member of the Apple Hill Chamber Players for 30 years and served as director of their summer festival. Of his 1997 recording of Bach solo cello suites, adapted for bass, Fanfare Magazine wrote, “Hartshorne proves himself a profound expositor of Bach’s sacred texts.” In 2004, Hartshorne formed the nonprofit Bach With Verse, traveling extensively to bring music to underserved audiences around the world.

Premiered in 1894, the String Quartet No. 12 is one of Czech composer Antonín Dvo?ák’s best-known chamber works. Written while the composer was living in America, and around the same time as his “New World” Symphony, the piece is celebrated for its marriage of Middle European style with characteristically American touches — an African American spiritual, the song of a Midwestern bird, the presence of a train.

Nicknamed the “Trout Quintet” because it refers to an earlier Schubert song titled “The Trout,” the Piano Quintet in A major by Franz Schubert is written for piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass. Written in 1819 but not published until a decade later, after the composer’s death, it’s known in particular for distinctively attractive sonorities, especially in the piano writing.