The quartet, which includes pianist and Bates College artist-in-residence Frank Glazer, performs in the annual Florence Pennell Gremley Concert at Bates. The program includes seldom-heard works by Mahler and Chausson, and, in Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 2, one of the first works written for this combination of instruments.

Glazer is arguably Maine’s best-known pianist, an artist of international stature and, with his wife, Ruth, founder of the Saco River Festival. His colleagues in the quartet are violist Scott Woolweaver, who also belongs to the Ives String Quartet and teaches in the Boston area; violinist Curtis Macomber, an accomplished recording and performing artist on the Juilliard School faculty; and cellist George Sopkin, a founding member of the Fine Arts Quartet and a faculty member at the Kneisel Hall School of Chamber Music, in Blue Hill.

The Bates program begins with Mahler’s Piano Quartet Movement in A Minor, written in 1876, while the composer was still studying in Vienna. Following is the quartet in E-Flat Major (K. 493) by Mozart, the first major composer to complete a piece in this format. Last up is Chausson’s Piano Quartet in A Major, a late work by this French Romantic.

The public is welcome to this concert thanks to the generosity of Florence Pennell Gremley, Bates Class of 1929. The Gremley Endowed Fund supports musicians’ visits to Bates and stipulates that every such visit include at least one concert to which the public is invited.

For more information about the concert, please call 207-786-6135.

The program showcases a new string quartet by William Matthews, the Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music at Bates. Composed in 1999, the five-movement work includes “Lullabye,” “Blue Ridge,” “Cooper Square,” “Blue Rider” and “La Marcy.” The program also features the String Quartet in B-flat, Op. 74, No. 3 (“The Rider”) by Franz Josef Haydn; and the String Quartet No. 2, composed in 1948, by Ernest Bloch.

Called “a model of experienced ensemble playing” by The New York Times, the Portland String Quartet has been performing, teaching and recording for more than two decades and consists of violist Julia Adams, cellist Paul Ross and violinists Ronald Lantz and Stephen Kecskemethy. Its international touring has taken the quartet to more than two dozen countries, from Russia and Japan, to Norway and Brazil. Artists in residence at Colby College, the foursome have performed in New York’s Carnegie Hall and at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens.

The ensemble’s recording of Bloch’s The Five String Quartets (Arabesque) was named outstanding chamber music release by both The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. More recently, the recording of the complete cycle of string quartets and the Piano Quintet of American composer George Chadwick was named among the best chamber releases by The New York Times.

The Portland String Quartet’s chamber music workshops gained international acclaim when the United Nations education division sponsored their string quartet workshops in Caracas, Venezuela. The group’s repertoire and recordings include the works of Bach, Schubert, Dvorak, Strauss, Kreisler, Bloch, Piston and Chadwick.

The Olin Arts Concert Hall program is made possible by the Florence Pennell Gremley Endowment Fund, given by Florence Pennell Gremley ’25 in memory of her parents, Walter J. Pennell, M.D., and Lelia Goff Pennell, members of the Bates classes of 1890 and 1893, respectively. For additional information, call the Olin Arts Center at 207-786-6135.

Cumming graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with highest honors from Bates where he studied with Frank Glazer, with whom he now collaborates frequently.

In 1994, Cumming spent a term in Prague playing chamber music on a scholarship from the European Mozart Foundation. Upon returning, he joined the teaching and performing faculty at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. Cumming completed the master’s program at New England Conservatory, where he earned a degree with Patricia Zander. He has played at recitals across New England as well as in Sussex, England, where he will return this year to play works of Schubert in celebration of the 200th anniversary of his birth.

With degrees from Oberlin and Yale, Corrie is a harpsichordist who received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Vienna. A member of the baroque musical ensemble Lygonia Consort, Corrie has played with the Portland Symphony and is on the music faculty of Bates College where he conducts the Bates College Choir. He is also organist and choir director at St. Mary’s in Falmouth.

Walther is a member of the faculty at Phillips Academy, where she teaches music and performs regularly in the Essex Ensemble. After receiving her master of arts degree in violin performance from the University of Indiana, where she studied with Franco Gulli and Stanley Ritchie, she was awarded a Fulbright grant. She spent 1993-94 in Copenhagen studying violin at the Royal Academy of Music with Peder Elbaek and Marta Libalova, traveling monthly to Paris for lessons with Sylvie Gazeau.

Currently a member of the Abbott Trio, Walter is a winner of the Concord Orchestra’s Concerto and the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Youth Concerto competitions. Recently, she has been appointed to the faculty at the New England Conservatory Extension Division.

Cavalear is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and a member of the music departments at Phillips Academy and Wheaton College. A performer with the Rhode Island Philharmonic, Springfield Symphony and Nashua Symphony, she is also a member of the Hartford Symphony.

The program is made possible by the Florence Pennell Gremley Endowment Fund, given by Florence Pennell Gremley ’25, in memory of her parents, Walter J. Pennell, M.D. and Lelia Goff Pennell, members of the Bates classes of 1890 and 1893 respectively.

For additional information, call the Olin Arts Center at 786-6135.

Cumming, a Wiscasset native who drew packed houses as a student pianist at Bates just three years ago, will play works by Mozart, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy and Satie. A reception in the lobby will immediately follow the concert.

A member of the music faculty at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., Cumming is enrolled in the graduate program at New England Conservatory in Boston where he expects to receive a master’s degree this year.

The program is made possible by the Florence Pennell Gremley Endowment Fund, given by Florence Pennell Gremley ’25, in memory of her parents, Walter J. Pennell, M.D. and Lelia Goff Pennell, members of the Bates classes of 1890 and 1893 respectively.

For additional information, call the Olin Arts Center at 786-6135.