In a landmark musical event, Bates College and the Maine Music Society will muster some 260 musicians for an evening of music by Johannes Brahms, including his exquisite Deutsches Requiem, at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 31, in the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, 27 Bartlett St.

The concert is the first collaboration between the Maine Music Society and the college, both notable presences in Maine music. The link is John Corrie, of Lewiston, who has directed the Bates College Choir since 1986 and became artistic director of the music society last spring.

In addition, this is the first time in recent memory that Brahms’ Requiem has been sung in the Lewiston-Auburn region with full orchestra and in the original German. (The printed program will include a full translation.)

Choral groups from the high schools of Lewiston and Auburn will also perform. Maine Gov. John Baldacci and Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen are scheduled to make opening remarks at the event.

For the general public, tickets cost $17.50 at the door and $15 in advance, available through the L/A Arts box office at 207-782-7228. Admission is free to students with valid ID, but tickets are required and reservations are strongly recommended. To reserve student tickets or for general information about this event, please call Bates College at 207-786-6135.

To open the program, Corrie will lead four choirs in two motets by Brahms, Schaffe in mir Gott (Op. 29, No. 2) and Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Muhseligen? (Op. 74, No. 1). The choirs are the Bates College Choir, the Edward Little High School Chamber Choir, the Lewiston High School Concert Choir and the Androscoggin Chorale, one of the music society’s two performing ensembles.

The remainder of the program is Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem (Op. 45), sung by the Bates and Androscoggin choirs and soloists Bonnie Scarpelli, soprano, and Peter Allen, baritone, both well-known to Maine audiences. (Allen is a member of the Bates class of 1966.)

They will be accompanied by a 60-piece orchestra composed of the Bates College Orchestra and the Maine Chamber Ensemble, the other performing arm of the music society. Hiroya Miura, of the Bates faculty, will conduct.

First performed in its seven-movement entirety in 1869, Brahms’ requiem is a consistently popular entry in his catalog. In its sophistication and complexity, the music marked a turning point in 19th-century composition.

“It’s a massive piece, and it needs this many players in the orchestra and singers in the choirs,” Corrie explains. It’s also highly challenging, he notes, but very gratifying, especially for the singers — as he knows first hand. In addition to directing the choirs and coordinating all the performing organizations for the concert, Corrie is singing with the tenors in the work.

“It’s just a glorious piece with such spectacular melodies,” he says.

Miura, who in 2005 first suggested that the Bates ensembles join forces for the piece, says that the work speaks to him in both personal and musical terms. From the purely musical standpoint, Miura — a composer himself — is intrigued by the overtones of Beethoven in this early Brahms work, as well as by the composer’s use of dark string colors contrasted against bright timbres from harp, winds and soprano voices.

“What’s also fascinating is that he took more than 10 years to write this piece — and despite that, it sounds so coherent,” Miura says.

In a more personal sense, the conductor is drawn by the work’s moral themes. The texts, which Brahms chose from the Old and New Testaments in the Lutheran Bible, deal with loss, consolation and a transcendent hopefulness for humanity. Miura says that for him, the performance will honor the memories of three musician friends, now deceased, whom he knew from Montreal, where he worked as a church organist for several years.

The Maine Music Society was founded in 1991 to support the artistic and educational activities of the Androscoggin Chorale, formed in Lewiston in 1972 as a community chorus, and the Maine Chamber Ensemble, founded in the late 1980s to support the chorale.

The society has attained a solid reputation for artistic excellence. Notable achievements include a 1994 performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which drew nearly 2,000 concertgoers to Lewiston and Brunswick; a 1992 production of Amahl and the Night Visitors, a professionally staged, full-scale opera; and the consistently popular annual Christmas at St. Peter’s concerts. For more than a decade, the society has presented the annual a cappella showcase called Battle of the Blends, attracting top ensembles from all over New England.

Scarpelli, of Portland, has been described by a Boston Globe critic as a “versatile and gifted singer” and “a singer of exceptional beauty of tone and security of technique.” Well-known to Maine audiences, she has sung major operatic roles, solo works with orchestra, works with chorus and orchestra, and in chamber works ranging from early to contemporary music.

Scarpelli sang the Brahms requiem previously with the Portland Symphony Orchestra. She has sung with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, Portland Opera Repertory Theater, Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, Choral Art Society, Maine Music Society and numerous community and collegiate choirs.

She was guest soloist with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra for Richard Strauss’ Vier letzte Lieder, and has frequently performed with the Surry Opera Company in Maine, France and Russia.

Allen, of Gorham, has sung in recital, operatic, musical theater and symphonic settings. He previously worked with the Maine Music Society in such music as Bizet’s L’Enfance du Christ, Handel’s Belshazzar and Messiah, Gounod’s Mors et Vita and the requiems of Faure and Durufle.

With the Portland Opera Repertory Theatre, Allen has sung solo roles in Bizet’s Carmen and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. He has been a guest soloist with the Choral Art Society, Portland Symphony Orchestra, Saengerfest and Masterworks Chorale of Lexington, Mass., the Oratorio Chorale and the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra. He is a recipient of the Lillian Nordica Award and was a member of the Cornish Trio, a Renaissance a cappella group, and the Bel Canto Quartet.

New music by a Bates faculty member and an afternoon of music for violin and piano highlight the performance offerings at Bates College on the second weekend of May.

William Matthews, the Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music, offers a concert of his own compositions at 8 p.m. Friday, May 7.

Another Matthews composition appears on a program offered by violinist Mary Jo Carlsen, of the Colby College faculty, and pianist Frank Glazer, Bates artist in residence, at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 9. The pair will also perform music by Mozart and Brahms.

Both concerts are open to the public at no charge and take place in Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

Titled Voicescapes, Matthews’ program consists of music composed with computer and created from vocal texts and the sounds of nature. The four compositions are “Island” (1989), adapting sounds collected on Islesboro, Maine; “The 89 Camels of Hadji Ali” (2003), from a musical-theater work about the 19th-century U.S. Army Camel Corps in Arizona; “Von Amy mit Liebe” (2004), a song based on a text by Richard Wagner; and “Rilke Remix Redux, mit Ralf” (2002-2004) settings of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets of Orpheus, read by Portland soprano Christina Astrachan and others.

Carlsen, an applied music associate at Colby, and Glazer, arguably Maine’s best-known pianist, will collaborate on Mozart’s Sonata in A (K. 526) and Brahms’ Sonata in D minor (Op. 108). Carlsen will perform “Ballade,” a piece for solo violin and narrator, from Matthews’ “89 Camels.”

Matthews has been on the Bates faculty for 26 years and was named the first Alice Swanson Esty professor of music in 1997. A flutist as well as an accomplished composer, his more-than 60 works include solo instrumental, vocal, chamber, orchestral, choral and theatrical music. Matthews has received several national awards and commissions for his work and teaches jazz and popular music as well as composition.

Carlsen is a recitalist in New England on violin, viola and Baroque violin, performing music from the Renaissance through the 21st century. She performs with the Portland Symphony, Portland Opera Repertory Theater, the Bangor Symphony and as a member of the Carlsen/Tschanz Duo. At Colby since 1985, she teaches violin, coaches chamber music and is concertmaster of the Colby Symphony.

Glazer, a resident artist at Bates College since 1980, is an artist of international stature who taught at the Eastman School of Music for 15 years before retiring to Maine with his wife, Ruth, in 1980. A student of pianist Artur Schnabel in the 1930s and ’40s, Glazer is one of the few remaining proteges of that great musician. Glazer’s long career includes numerous recordings, his own television program in the 1950s and countless solo recitals and ensemble performances around the world.

William Matthews, the Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music, offers a concert of his own compositions at 8 p.m. Friday, May 7.

Another Matthews composition appears on a program offered by violinist Mary Jo Carlsen, of the Colby College faculty, and pianist Frank Glazer, Bates artist in residence, at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 9. The pair will also perform music by Mozart and Brahms.

Both concerts are open to the public at no charge and take place in Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

Titled “Voicescapes,” Matthews’ program consists of music composed with computer and created from vocal texts and the sounds of nature. The four compositions are “Island” (1989), adapting sounds collected on Islesboro, Maine; “The 89 Camels of Hadji Ali” (2003), from a musical-theater work about the 19th-century U.S. Army Camel Corps in Arizona; “Von Amy mit Liebe” (2004), a song based on a text by Richard Wagner; and “Rilke Remix Redux, mit Ralf” (2002-2004) settings of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Sonnets of Orpheus,” read by Portland soprano Christina Astrachan and others.

Carlsen, an applied music associate at Colby, and Glazer, arguably Maine’s best-known pianist, will collaborate on Mozart’s Sonata in A (K. 526) and Brahms’ Sonata in D minor (Op. 108). Carlsen will perform “Ballade,” a piece for solo violin and narrator, from Matthews’ “89 Camels.”

Matthews has been on the Bates faculty for 26 years and was named the first Alice Swanson Esty professor of music in 1997. A flutist as well as an accomplished composer, his more-than 60 works include solo instrumental, vocal, chamber, orchestral, choral and theatrical music. Matthews has received several national awards and commissions for his work and teaches jazz and popular music as well as composition.

Carlsen is a recitalist in New England on violin, viola and Baroque violin, performing music from the Renaissance through the 21st century. She performs with the Portland Symphony, Portland Opera Repertory Theater, the Bangor Symphony and as a member of the Carlsen/Tschanz Duo. At Colby since 1985, she teaches violin, coaches chamber music and is concertmaster of the Colby Symphony.

Glazer, a resident artist at Bates College since 1980, is an artist of international stature who taught at the Eastman School of Music for 15 years before retiring to Maine with his wife, Ruth, in 1980. A student of pianist Artur Schnabel in the 1930s and ’40s, Glazer is one of the few remaining proteges of that great musician. Glazer’s long career includes numerous recordings, his own television program in the 1950s and countless solo recitals and ensemble performances around the world.

Both concerts are open to the public at no cost.

The Portland String Quartet performs at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 27. The program spans the 20th century with music by three composers: Ernest Bloch and Maine native Walter Piston, both of whom the quartet has recorded, and contemporary composer Peter Re.

At 8 p.m. the following day, Feb. 28, a trio led by drummer, pianist and composer Steve Grover presents a program of classic and modern jazz.

The Portland String Quartet — violist Julia Adams, violinists Steve Kecskemethy and Ronald Lantz, and cellist Paul Ross — has performed, taught and recorded with its founding members since 1969. Nationally known, the quartet has played an important role in the artistic renaissance of the state of Maine, championing Maine and American composers across the United States and around the world.

A Lewiston native, Steve Grover has worked with the late, legendary Maine guitarist Lenny Breau; was a founding member of the band The Friends of Jazz; and achieved national recognition with his composition “Blackbird Suite,” a setting of poetry by Wallace Stevens. In 1994, the suite won the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz/BMI Jazz Composers Competition and was performed at the Kennedy Center as part of the Monk Institute’s competition. It was released on CD in 1997, to glowing reviews.

Since 1985 Grover has been an adjunct faculty member at Bowdoin College, Bates College and the University of Maine at Augusta. He was a faculty member for The International Summer Jazz School in Cracow, Poland, and The New England Percussion School.

As a jazz drummer, Grover has performed with nationally known players including Eddie Gomez and Herb Pomeroy, and his own recordings have been reviewed in Downbeat, JazzTimes, Cadence and other publications.

For more information about the Bates concerts, call 207-786-6135.

With student performances of music and drama and a recital by Maine’s best-known pianist in store, the days before Thanksgiving have a lot to offer in the arts at Bates College.

The Robinson Players, one of the oldest student theater companies in the nation, offer their second David Ives piece for the autumn: All In The Timing, a collection of absurdist one-acts playing at 7 p.m. Nov. 15-17 in the Benjamin Mays Center.

Meanwhile, the Department of Theater and Rhetoric offers Sex and Death, an evening of three one-acts written by Diana Amsterdam and directed by students in Professor of Theater Paul Kuritz’s directing class, at 7 p.m. in the Gannett Theater Nov. 19 and 21, and Dec. 5-6.

In addition, the dance department offers a showcase performance of work by Boston choreographer Sara Sweet Rabidoux in Chase Lounge at 7 p.m. Nov. 15.

At 8 p.m. Nov. 15-16 in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, the Bates College Choir sings a cantata from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Mozart’s Solemn Vespers of the Confessor with orchestral accompaniment.

Frank Glazer, a resident artist at Bates and a pianist of international renown, performs music by Schumann, Beethoven, Debussy and Liszt at 8 p.m. Nov. 20, also in Olin.

Finally, in the visual arts, a Purdue University professor of art, design and women’s studies offers a lecture at 4:10 p.m. Nov. 15 in Skelton Lounge. Pheobe Farris will survey contemporary female Native American artists.

A popular and critical favorite described by one reviewer as a “poet of the keyboard,” Nakamatsu performs works by Joseph Woelfl, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff, Debussy and Liszt in his Bates program.

A California native and former high school German teacher, Nakamatsu became the 10th Van Cliburn gold medalist in 1997. A Los Angeles Times reviewer later wrote that “Nakamatsu has everything he ought to have: a solid, effortless and comprehensive technique, wide dynamics and a spectrum of tone colors, exquisite good taste, a commanding musical authority, a searching interest in different styles and a poet’s imagination.”

Nakamatsu records for the prestigious harmonia mundi usa label. He is equally comfortable in solo recital, chamber ensembles and as an orchestral soloist, and his repertoire runs from Bach through Beethoven to such contemporary composers as Lukas Foss. He performed Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” at the Clinton White House, and has appeared with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester-Berlin, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco and Cincinnati symphony orchestras and the Boston Pops, among other major organizations.

The program for Nakamatsu’s Maine debut includes Joseph Woelfl’s Sonata in E Major (Op. 33); a series of four Schubert impromptus (D. 899); Mendelssohn’s Fantasy in F-Sharp Minor (Op. 28); three preludes by Rachmaninoff (Op. 32, No. 1, and Op. 23, Nos. 4 and 7); Debussy’s “Suite bergamasque” and “Apres une lecture du Dante (Fantasia quasi Sonata),” from Liszt’s “Annees de pelerinage,” Book II.

A connoisseur’s choice of jazz and classical musicians, the five-concert 2002-03 Bates College Concert Series continues on Oct. 5 with a performance by jazz trumpeter Tiger Okoshi and his band. Later concerts in the series feature pianist Frank Glazer and violinist Curtis Macomber (Nov. 9; free admission); jazz guitarist Pat Martino (Jan. 18); and the Brentano String Quartet with Maine pianist Yuri Funahashi (March 8).

For more information about the Bates College Concert Series, please call 207-786-6135.

Beginning with a performance by Jon Nakamatsu, the only American gold medalist in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition since 1981, the 2002-2003 Bates College Concert Series is a connoisseur’s choice of jazz and classical players. Nakamatsu’s concert, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall opens a series that includes jazz trumpeter Tiger Okoshi, jazz guitarist Pat Martino and such classical artists as Maine pianists Frank Glazer and Yuri Funahashi, violinist Curtis Macomber and the renowned Brentano String Quartet.

All five concerts take place in the college’s Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. Admission to four of the concerts is $7 for adults and $5 for seniors. Admission to the Glazer-Macomber program on Nov. 9 is free, through the support of the Florence Pennell Gremley Fund at Bates.

Here’s a summary of the 2002-2003 Bates College Concert Series:

Jon Nakamatsu (7:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29): A California native and former high school German teacher, Jon Nakamatsu became the 10th Van Cliburn competition gold medalist in 1997. He records for the prestigious harmonia mundi usa label, and is a popular and critical favorite described by one reviewer as a “poet of the keyboard.”

Nakamatsu is equally comfortable in solo recital, chamber ensembles and as an orchestral soloist, and his repertoire runs from Bach through Beethoven to such contemporary composers as Lukas Foss. The program for his Maine debut includes works by Woelfl, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Brahms.

Tiger Okoshi & Co. (8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 5): Toru “Tiger” Okoshi took up trumpet as a teen-ager after hearing a concert in his native Japan by Louis Armstrong. After graduating summa cum laude from the Berklee College of Music, in Boston (where he is now an associate professor), he toured with such jazz greats as vibraphonist Gary Burton and drummer Buddy Rich. A JVC recording artist and clinician for Yamaha Corporation, Okoshi is known for such recordings as Color of Soil (1998), Two Sides to Every Story (1996) and 1993′s Echoes of a Note, a tribute to Armstrong.

Pianist Frank Glazer and violinist Curtis Macomber (8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 9; free admission): Colleagues in the New England Piano Quartette, one of Maine’s best-loved chamber groups, Macomber and Glazer have performed together since the mid-1990s. For this concert, they will play three Beethoven sonatas.

A faculty member at Juilliard, Macomber belonged to the New World String Quartet from 1982 to 1993 and is a founding member of the Apollo Trio. He is an influential champion of new music whose CRI disc Songs of Solitude, a compilation of contemporary repertoire, was named one of the best solo instrumental recordings of 1996 by the New York Observer.

Maine’s best-known pianist and a resident artist at Bates, Glazer is an artist of international stature who taught at the Eastman School of Music, in Rochester, N.Y., before retiring to Maine with his wife, Ruth, in 1980. The couple founded the popular Saco River Festival, held in Cornish every summer. A student of pianist Artur Schnabel, Glazer is one of the few surviving proteges of that great musician. His long career has included numerous recordings, his own television program in the 1950s and countless solo recitals and performances.

Jazz guitarist Pat Martino (8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 18): Musical insiders know Martino from his larger-than-life technique, intrepid improvisations and a stylistic breadth that spans bop, R&B and funk. (He is also celebrated for his hard-fought recovery from a life-threatening brain aneurysm in the 1980s.) A veteran of three decades in jazz, Martino has made more than 20 albums and is currently signed with the esteemed Blue Note label. Pianist Gil Goldstein accompanies him in this appearance at Bates.

Brentano String Quartet with pianist Yuri Funahashi (8 p.m. Saturday, March 8): Founded in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet received three major awards within its first year and went on to become the first (and current) quartet-in-residence at Princeton University. The quartet has performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Library of Congress, Lincoln Center and other important venues. Distinguished by technical brilliance and musical insight, the group is equally convincing with the established repertoire and new music. The Bates program includes Bach, Webern and Dvorak.

Particularly acclaimed for her solo work and sonata recordings with violinists Joseph Swenson and Arturo Delmoni, Yuri Funahashi has performed in major concert settings around the world. In her adopted home state, where she is an adjunct professor at the University of Maine at Farmington, she is known for her performances at the Sebago-Long Lake Chamber Music Festival and with the Maine Music Society. For the Bates date, she joins the Brentano String Quartet for Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet, Op. 57.

For more information about the Bates Concert Series, please call 207-786-6135.

Performances by student musicians at Bates College hit a crescendo in late March. All in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, on Russell Street, these performances by Bates ensembles and individual students are free and open to the public.

Directed by John Neal, the Bates College Concert Band presents a program primarily of music by Romantic-era composers at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 20. Also on the docket is “When Time Shall Be No More,” a contemporary composition by James Curnow, and two well-known marches: the Spanish paso doble “Amparito Roca” and Sousa’s popular “The Thunderer.”

At 8 p.m. Friday, March 22, the college’s Steel Pan Rhythm Riders offer an evening of calypso, jazz and works in other genres. The steel band, founded and directed by Assistant Professor of Music Linda Williams, numbers more than a dozen students and will play music by Duke Ellington, calypso great Lord Kitchener and Williams herself.

The Bates College Orchestra performs music by Beethoven and Copland at 8 p.m. Sunday, March 24. William Matthews, Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music at Bates, conducts the ensemble in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 and two suites by Copland: “The Tender Land” and Four Dance Episodes from “Rodeo.”

The final ensemble performance in March is by the Bates College Jazz Band, at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 27. Senior thesis recitals, including programs by a clarinetist, a trumpeter and two student composers, take place at 3 p.m. March 23 and 8 p.m. March 29, 30 and 31.

For more information, call 207-786-6135.

Each year, more than 25 musicians take the Musicians from Marlboro concerts across the country for what Time magazine has called “the most exciting chamber music in the United States.” Now in its 36th season, the touring program has introduced many of today’s leading solo and chamber music artists to American audiences, including pianists Richard Goode, Murray Perahia and Andras Schiff; violinists Pamela Frank, Jaime Laredo, Cho-Liang Lin and Shlomo Mintz; flutists Paula cellists Nathanial Rosen, Leslie Parnas and Peter Wiley; clarinetist Richard Stolzman; soprano Benita Velente; and baritone Sanford Sylvan. The New York Times has called the group “a trademark that guarantees a product of the highest quality.”

The Musicians from Marlboro is a community of musicians who come together every year for seven weeks in the Green Mountains of Vermont to exchange ideas and explore chamber music. It is a retreat where exceptional young professionals make music side by side with veteran, or “senior” artists.

One of those credited with founding the school is Adolph Busch, who came to America from Germany in the 1930s at the dawn of the Nazi era. Busch, with his brother Herman, his son-in-law Rudolf Serkin and others, hoped to create an environment in which the love of music was paramount.

Serkin, the man most closely associated with Marlboro’s development after Busch’s death in 1952, called Marlboro “a republic of equals.” Cellist Pablo Casals, who conducted at the festival from 1962 until his death in 1973, referred to it as a “temple of music.”

Each season exceptional senior and younger composers are invited to Marlboro through its composer-in-residence program creating an invaluable learning environment for Marlboro’s participants. Keeping with the tradition of presenting a broad sampling of musical works explored at Marlboro’s summer program, Musicians from Marlboro touring groups perform works by their composers-in-residence. Leon Kirchner’s Piano Trio No. 1, performed at Marlboro in 1997, is slated for this year’s tour.

The chamber music ensemble features pianist Frank Glazer, violinist Curtis Macomber, violist Scott Woolweaver and cellist George Sopkin. Artist-in-residence and lecturer in music at Bates since 1980, Glazer previously served on the faculty of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester for 15 years. A specialist in Beethoven, he is a recipient of the distinguished Paderewski Piano Medal, awarded in London to “an artist of superlative degree.”

His performances have taken him throughout the United States, South America, Europe and the Near East. He has performed at Carnegie and Avery Fischer halls in New York, the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London and the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. A founding member of the New England Piano Quartette, Glazer performs regularly in the Portland Chamber Music Society series.

According to the New York Observer, “Macomber’s intensely human fiddle seems an entire universe, sufficient unto itself.” A versatile solo and chamber musician, Macomber is equally comfortable with and committed to works from Bach to Babbit. His discography includes the complete Brahms string quartets as well as the Roger Sessions solo sonata. Macomber has recorded for a variety of labels including Nonesuch and CRI, which recently released his second solo recording, “Songs of Solitude,” named one of the best solo instrumental discs in 1996.

A featured lecturer and recitalist in the first American Violin Congress in 1987, Macomber was a second-prize winner in the 1980 Rockefeller Foundation International Competition for the Performance of 20th Century American Violin Music.

Macomber has given recitals at Carnegie Recital Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Alice Tully Hall and the Kennedy Center. He has soloed with the Musica Aeterna Orchestra, the Juilliard Symphony and the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. As first violinist of the award-winning New World String Quartet from 1982 to 1993, Macomber recorded 14 discs and performed frequently on public television in the United States and Great Britain.

A member of the violin faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, Macomber holds a bachelor’s and advanced degrees from the Juilliard School. He was appointed artist in residence at Harvard University from 1982 to 1990. Woolweaver is a founding member of the Boston Composers String Quartet and plays viola for the Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society and Boston Baroque. A champion of 20th-century music, he has premiered numerous works for the viola, many which were written for him.

Woolweaver teaches at Tufts University, Newton Music School and the University of Massachusetts and records for, among others, the Orion, TelDec and Decca labels. He joined the Ives String Quartet in 1999.

A founding member of both the Fine Arts Quartet and the New England Piano Quartette, Sopkin has recorded solo cello repertoire by Ernest Bloch and John Downey and solo works written for him by Werner Torkanowsky. He has performed and lectured at festivals and concert halls throughout the world. After faculty appointments at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Carnegie Mellon University, Sopkin moved to Surrey, Maine, where he has been on the staff of the Kneisel Hall School of Chamber Music since 1995.

The annual Alvin E. David Concert is funded by a bequest to Bates College made in 1998 by Alvin David, father of Gerald David, Bates class of 1960, from Morris Plain, N.J. The endowed fund supports a classical concert on campus.