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.

Classical piano from a member of the applied music faculty and high-energy American roots music are on tap this weekend at Bates.

Pianist Anastasia Antonacos performs music by Schubert, Schumann, Liszt and Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara at 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 25, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The concert is open to the public at no cost. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Up next are the Powder Kegs, a New York-state string band on a mission to recharge the communication between the new generation and its musical roots. They take the stage at 9 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 26, at the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St.

The show opens at 8 p.m. with Day for Night, a Portland duo that performs classic country harmonies in the style of the Louvin Brothers and the Everly Brothers. Open to the public at no cost, the concert is sponsored by WRBC-FM, the student-run radio station at Bates College.

A member of the applied music faculty at Bates, Antonacos has performed around the world in solo recitals and as a chamber musician. In Maine, she has made solo appearances with the Portland and Bangor symphony orchestras.

Antonacos has worked with members of the Vermeer and Cassatt string quartets, and with renowned pianists Leonard Hokanson and Edmund Battersby. She has been a chamber music coach in Bay Chamber Concerts’ Next Generation program for years, and regularly serves as a masterclass teacher and adjudicator. She is a founding member of the Bayside Trio and Harlequine, and teaches at the University of Southern Maine, as well as Bates and Bowdoin colleges.

Antonacos won first place at the International Young Artist Music Competition in Bulgaria, and holds prizes from the Capdepera International Piano Competition in Mallorca and the Indianapolis Matinee Musicale Competition.

The Powder Kegs are: Ryan Dieringer, “doghouse bass” and vocals; Jake Hoffman, banjo, keyboards and vocals; Daniel Zane, guitars and vocals; Sam McDougle, fiddle, electric guitar, noise and percussion; and Pete Winne, slide guitar, harmonica, washboard and vocals.

Zane, McDougle and Dieringer first played together in a bluegrass band in high school. When McDougle went off to college at Vassar, he met Hoffman and Winne. They formed the Powder Kegs in winter 2006, and headed to Burlington the following summer where they worked on a farm and performed at bars, clubs and on the street.

The band’s full-length album, The Seedhouse, was a bestseller on CDbaby.com in April 2007. On the album, wrote a reviewer for Vermont’s Times-Argus newspaper, “they’ve even managed to give a new spin to Hank Williams’ ‘Lonesome Whistle’ and the Rolling Stones’ ‘Dead Flowers.’ ”

Also in spring 2007, the Powder Kegs performed live on National Public Radio’s “A Prairie Home Companion” as the winners of the “People in Their 20s” talent show.