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.

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.

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 Viollin 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 Julliard 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 B.M., M.M. and D.M.A. Degrees from the Julliard School. He was appointed artist-in-residence at Harvard University from 1982 to 1990.

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 Quartet, Glazer performs regularly in the Portland Chamber Music Society series.