The Hot Club of San Francisco. Photograph by Lenny Gonzalez.

The Olin Arts Center Concert Hall is the setting for two don’t-miss jazz performances in May.

Masters of the sophisticated French-Gypsy swing pioneered by guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli, the Hot Club of San Francisco presents its Cinema Vivant film-and-music program in a joint presentation with L/A Arts at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 10.

Led by a guitarist who “combines an astonishing command of the fingerboard with a seemingly endless flow of melodic invention,” according to Soundstage, the Sheryl Bailey 3 performs in an Olin Arts Alive presentation at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 17.

Tickets for the HCSF show are $20 by reservation at the L/A Arts ticketing site. Tickets for Bailey are $12, available at batestickets.com. Free tickets are available to the first 100 seniors and students who make a reservation at olinarts@bates.edu.

The Olin Arts Center is located at 75 Russell St. For more information, please call 207-786-6163 or email olinarts@bates.edu.

Hot Club of San Francisco

Jazz guitarist Sheryl Bailey.

The Hot Club of San Francisco, a quintet of accomplished and versatile musicians, celebrates the music of Reinhardt and Grappelli’s pioneering Hot Club de France.

The HCSF borrows the instrumentation of violin, bass and guitars from the original Hot Club while breathing new life into the music with innovative arrangements of classics and originals by lead guitarist Paul Mehling. The band features the amazing violin of two-time Grammy Award winner Evan Price and a swinging rhythm section.

To hear the ensemble is to return to the 1930s, the intimate jazz clubs of Paris and the elegant lounges of the Hotel Ritz. Often called Gypsy jazz, the music of the Hot Club of San Francisco has entranced audiences around the globe for more than 20 years.

“We have a swing-or-die approach to the music that’s distinctly American,” says Mehling.

At Bates, the band presents Cinema Vivant, an evening of silent films accompanied by live Gypsy swing. Two films are by European filmmaker Ladislaw Starewicz, a pioneer of stop-action animation: The Cameraman’s Revenge, a charming piece about the marital troubles of beetles, and The Mascot, an adventure story about lost toys.

From the other side of the Atlantic comes There It Is, a recently rediscovered film by American Charley Bowers, who revolutionized film in the 1920s by combining animation with live action.

Sheryl Bailey 3

“The most essential quality in a jazz musician is one’s sense of groove — time,” Bailey told guitarnoise.com writer David Hodge. “Listening to a lot of jazz is also important to get the ‘sound of jazz’ in your ear, and also, your heart.

“If you treat jazz as a science experiment, it will always sound like that — falling in love with the music is the key to open the door.”

A composer and player ranked among the foremost bop-based guitarists to emerge in the 1990s, Bailey brings organist Ron Oswanski and drummer Ian Froman to Bates for a night of hard-swinging contemporary jazz. It’s a melodic collaboration that Allaboutjazz.com reviewer Elliot Simon describes as a “communal musical journey.”

Bailey has toured extensively in the U.S. and around the world as a member of David Krakauer’s Klezmer Madness and the Jazz Guitars Meet Hendrix quartet. Her 2011 CD For All Those Living (PureMusic Records) is the most recent of her eight CDs as bandleader, and her catalog also includes the concert DVD The Sheryl Bailey 3: Live in NYC (2008, Mel Bay Records).

Bailey was chosen as a Jazz Ambassador for the U.S. State Department in 2000 for a South American tour, and earned third place in the Thelonius Monk International Jazz Guitar competition in 1995. Hailing from Pittsburgh, Bailey studied at Berklee College of Music, where she now teaches.

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.

As the Olin Arts Center celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, the Olin Concert Hall has instituted a new music series to stand alongside the college’s long-running Noonday Concerts.

With traditional Noonday Concerts still taking place in the concert hall at 12:30 p.m. on selected Tuesdays, the new “Flash” concert series is intended to provide a more casual experience, with events popping up at diverse locations and unexpected times.

The series commences with a jazz quintet featuring Bates faculty members at 4:10 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16, at the Florence Keigwin Amphitheater, situated between Lake Andrews and the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

Next in the Flash series is a performance by jazz guitarist Sean McGowan at noon Tuesday, Sept. 20, in the Fireplace Lounge in the New Commons Building, 136 Central Ave.

Meanwhile, the next traditional Noonday entry takes place at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 27, in the Olin Concert Hall, as Sylvia Berry performs works by J.C. Bach and Mozart on a fortepiano built by Rod Regier of Freeport.

All these concerts are open to the public at no charge. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

The Bates jazz quintet consists of drummer Steve Grover, pianist Tom Snow, guitarist John Smedley, bassist Nate Therrien and saxophonist David Wells.

Grover has drummed with Eddie Gomez, Marvin Stamm, Jerry Bergonzi, Chris Potter, Herb Pomeroy, Mick Goodrick, Hal Crook, Tony Malaby, Greg Tardy, Jeff Coffin and others. He has performed as bandleader on a variety of CDs and is also known as a composer — his Blackbird Suite won the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz/BMI Jazz Composers Competition in 1994. Grover teaches at Bates and other Maine colleges.

Snow is a pianist and the director of the Bates Jazz Band. He 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.

Smedley, a physics professor at Bates, is a jazz guitarist known for performances solo and with the Three Point Trio and other combos. A specialist in atomic physics, he also teaches musical acoustics and the physics of electronic sound for non-science majors, and offers a jazz guitar course that provides a historical survey of the genre and individual instruction on the guitar.

Therrien is a New Hampshire native and freelance musician. He has performed in concerts and radio appearances domestically and abroad, playing at such venues as Boston Symphony Hall and the Library of Congress. He has shared the stage with jazz greats Clark Terry, James Williams, Rufus Reid, Branford Marsalis, Sam Rivers and James Moody. Recent projects include Jose Duque’s Zumba Tres, the original rock group the Douglas James Trio and the Nate Therrien Quartet.

Wells has recorded or performed with Rosemary Clooney, Bob Mintzer, New York Voices, John Handy, Mark Levine, Scott Amendola and funk pioneer Zigaboo Modeliste. He was a featured soloist in the PBS documentary Swing It, and has performed in the United States and abroad. He teaches saxophone at Bates, at the University of Maine at Augusta and in private practice, and directs the award-winning Westbrook High School jazz combo.

Maine native McGowan combines diverse influences and unconventional techniques to create a broad palette of textures for solo fingerstyle guitar. His first recording, the self-produced River Coffee, won the 2002 Best Independent Release of the Year Award from Acoustic Guitar magazine. Music from the CD has been featured on the BBC’s “Great Guitars” radio program, and has been published in Japan’s Acoustic Guitar magazine and Mel Bay’s Master Anthology of Fingerstyle Guitar, Vol. 3. McGowan frequently contributes lessons and articles to Acoustic Guitar, Guitar Teacher and Jazz Improv magazines.

McGowan is an assistant professor of music performance at the University of Colorado Denver. He has served as an artist-clinician for the Maine Arts Commission since 2000 and has taught guitar at the University of Maine and Bowdoin College.

Berry specializes in Viennese music of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She appeared frequently in the Utrecht Early Music Festival Fringe Series in the Netherlands as a soloist and a chamber musician, and has also given solo recitals in the U.S. and Italy. She is also active as a writer, most notably penning extensive liner notes for fortepianist Bart van Oort’s Complete Keyboard Works of Mozart, a 14-CD set released by Brilliant Classics in 2006.

A fast-rising star called by one critic “the most original jazz singer in a generation,” Gretchen Parlato performs at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Admission is $12 for the general public and $6 for seniors, children and students. Tickets are available here. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or e-mail.

Reviewing her performance at the 2010 Newport Jazz Festival, The Boston Globe’s Steve Greenlee wrote: “Working in a style that drew from bop, bossa nova and strains of world jazz, Parlato delivered her vocals in a breathy manner, nearly whispering her lyrics. . . . The evidence is piling up that young Ms. Parlato is the most original jazz singer in a generation.”

In a Dream, Parlato’s debut album for ObliqSound, was released in 2009. Declared the year’s best vocal jazz album by the Village Voice, In a Dream finds the singer embarking on a beguiling journey deep into both her own compositions and classic material by the likes of Stevie Wonder, Duke Ellington, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and others — all of which she instantly makes her own.

Los Angeles native Parlato was innately blessed with a striking musical gift. After an education that included studies at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance, where she was the first student vocalist, she moved to New York in 2003. A year later, Parlato won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocals Competition and then, in 2005, she self-released her debut CD.

In the years since, Parlato’s star has only risen. She has toured internationally with her own band and as a guest of many A-list artists — notable performances include the Hollywood Bowl with Oscar Castro-Neves, Gal Costa, Ivan Lins and Dianne Reeves; and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

Her recording credits as a guest include Terence Blanchard’s 2005 Grammy-nominated album Flow, Kenny Barron’s The Traveler and Esperanza Spalding’s 2008 self-titled album.

Parlato was recently featured in The Documentary Channel series Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense and in a special called Rising Stars on Japan’s NHK-TV, which gave a one-hour focus to her. Glowing reviews follow her around — such as one by The New York Times’ Ben Ratliff that singled out her attention to rhythm and dynamics, and proclaimed, “It’s evident that she’s an extraordinary singer.”

Learn more.

Jazz composer, bassist and singer Avishai Cohen made a Bates debut in 2008 that concert hall manager Seth Warner calls “amazing.” Now he returns for a performance at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 17, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. Tickets are $12 and $6, and are available at www.batestickets.com.

Cohen brings with him the players and songs from his 2009 album Aurora (EMI International), a highly personal effort reflecting the cultural cross-currents that flow through Israel, where Cohen was born, and featuring lyrics in Hebrew, English, Spanish and Ladino. The French newspaper L’Express called it “an album that could play an entire lifetime,” with “catchy and timeless melodies.”

Supporting Cohen at Bates are vocalist Karen Malka, percussionist Itmar Doari and oudist Amos Hoffman.

Not to be confused with the trumpeter of the same name, Cohen came of age musically in New York as a member of Chick Corea’s sextet Origin. Known as a bandleader for making an eclectic brand of jazz that seamlessly blends energy and lyricism, he has also performed with jazz masters like Paquito D’Rivera, major symphony orchestras and pop-soul artist Alicia Keyes. Bass Player Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential bass players of the 20th century.

The Jazz at the Olin Arts Center Series resumes with Grammy-nominated drummer Dafnis Prieto and his Si o Si Quartet at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 13, in the Olin Arts Concert Hall at Bates College, 75 Russell St.

Tickets, at $12 general admission and $6 for seniors and students, are available at www.batestickets.com.

Prieto also leads a jazz workshop at 4:30 on the 13th. Admission is free and participants will receive a free ticket to the evening performance. For more information about the concert and workshop, please contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Prieto, a native of Cuba, leads a quartet boasting some of New York’s outstanding Latin jazz players. Described as “the essence of the modern drummer” by The Sacramento Bee, he has received commissions, grants and fellowships from Chamber Music America, Jazz at Lincoln Center, East Carolina University and Meet the Composer. His awards include “Up ‘N’ Comer of the Year” from the Jazz Journalists Association in 2006, a Grammy Award nomination for Best Latin Jazz Album and a Latin Grammy nomination for Best New Artist in 2007.

Prieto has created music for dance, film and chamber ensembles as well as his own bands. He composed the title track for the Grammy-winning album “Song for Chico” by Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra in 2008. All About Jazz has characterized his compositions as “melding Afro-Cuban rhythms and modern jazz harmonies into music that is ecstatic and intelligent.”

He has served on the music faculty at New York University since 2005.

Thomas Snow conducts the Bates College Jazz Band. Pianist, bandleader and composer, Snow is one of New England’s most versatile and sought-after musicians.

Jeff Coffin

A concert featuring a saxophonist known for his work with banjoist Bela Fleck and a performance by pianist Frank Glazer and violinist Curtis Macomber highlight the Bates College calendar in the coming days.

Jazz saxophonist Jeff Coffin, with the Thomas Snow Trio, performs at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22, in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St. Coffin also leads a masterclass earlier in the day, at 4:15 p.m., for amateur jazz saxophonists.

Former members of the New England Piano Quartette, Glazer and Macomber perform Beethoven’s Sonata in A major, No. 9 (Op. 47; “Kreutzer”) and works by Mozart and Schubert at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 26, also in the Olin auditorium.

The concerts and masterclass are open to the public and free of charge, but tickets are required. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

A member of the two-time Grammy Award winning Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Coffin has shared the stage with such diverse and renowned acts as the Dave Matthews Band, Phish, Van Morrison, the Dixie Chicks, Umphrey’s McGee and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Known for his ability to play alto and tenor sax simultaneously, Coffin defies labels in favor of the pure essence of musical creativity. “Whether it be New Orleans ‘second line,’ African music, Indian ragas, folk songs, Alan Lomax field recordings, jazz or funk,” he writes on the Web site for one of his bands, The Mu’tet, “the spirit and breath of the music is what I take away from listening and playing. It’s what decides for me whether I like it or not.”

The Thomas Snow Trio consists of pianist Snow, a lecturer in music at Bates and director of the college jazz band; bassist Tim Webb; and drummer Steve Grover, a member of Bates’ applied music faculty.

Glazer, of Topsham, has been a resident artist at Bates since 1980. He is a musician of international stature whose long career includes numerous recordings and premieres of contemporary music, his own television program in the 1950s and countless solo recitals and performances with orchestras and chamber ensembles, including the New England Piano Quartette, of which he was a founder.

“Just to be in the room while Frank Glazer shares his tremendous musical wisdom and experience with artists like Macomber and the Parker quartet will be a treat,” says Seth Warner, manager of the Olin concert hall.

In the 1930s Glazer studied with both Artur Schnabel, a leading interpreter of the Viennese masters, and with Arnold Schoenberg, whose atonal compositions were the antithesis of Viennese lyricism.

Glazer was 21 when he made his New York debut at Town Hall on Oct. 20, 1936. That event (recreated at Bates on its 70th anniversary in 2006) marked the start of a performing career that finds this artist creatively robust in his 90s.

Macomber is a musician whose playing was praised by Fanfare magazine as “remarkable for its depth of feeling as well as for technical excellence.” He is considered one of the most versatile soloists and chamber musicians before the public today, with a range spanning Bach and Babbitt and a discography ranging from the complete Brahms string quartets to the Roger Sessions solo sonata.

Dance and song come together in two upcoming performances at Bates’ Olin Arts Center Concert Hall.

The remarkable dancer-choreographer-singer Janis Brenner offers a solo performance in Olin at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 17. Brenner explores the passion, humor, depth and emotional power of our relationships to others, to ourselves and to the world around us. The New York Times described Brenner’s dances as filled with “free-wheeling motion and rooted emotional intensity.”

Her Bates performance includes a vocal suite by Meredith Monk and “Solo For Janis” by Richard Siegal. This performance is open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required.

The following week, the 2008-09 Bates College Concert Series continues with a performance by the tango troupe called Pablo Aslan’s Avantango at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 26, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

New York-based Avantango, led by bassist Aslan, comprises six musicians and four dancers, plus a guest singer, all Argentine natives. Mixing the legendary music of Astor Piazzolla with contemporary themes and rhythms, the ensemble reclaims the tango as a living tradition, while incorporating jazz improvisation and turning historic cliches upside down.

A New York Daily News critic wrote that Avantango “uncovered a colorful, bristling range of musical possibilities . . . harnessing jazz improvisation to take off in some suggestive, fascinating musical directions.” Avantango members have toured with such artists as Shakira, Yo Yo Ma and Julio Iglesias, and appeared in the National Geographic television special “Tango!” narrated by Robert Duvall.

Bates Concert Series performances take place at 8 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. Tickets are $10 general admission and $4 for students and seniors, and are available at www.batestickets.com. For reservations and more information, please call 207-786-6135, visit the concert series Web site or olinarts@bates.edu.

Featuring a lively blend of jazz, Latin and classical music, the college’s flagship series of musical events resumes during the winter with the renowned guitarists known as the Assad Brothers (Jan. 31) and finally, Germany’s Auryn Quartet in a two-evening stand that begins the group’s multi-year presentation of the complete Beethoven string quartets at Bates (Feb. 5-6).

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.