Maine’s best-known pianist, a classical guitarist offering an evening of South American music, and performers from the Portland Chamber Music Festival make this a can’t-miss weekend for music lovers at Bates College.

All three concerts take place in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Frank Glazer, a pianist of international stature and an artist in residence at Bates since 1980, performs a program of Beethoven sonatas at 8 p.m. Friday, March 3. The concert is open to the public at no charge.

The following evening, also at 8, guitarist Michael Nigro concludes the 2005-06 Bates College Concert Series. Admission is $8 for adults and $5 for senior citizens and non-Bates students with ID.

Finally, at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 5, the Portland Chamber Music Festival makes its annual return to Bates with a program by Mozart, Kodály and Shostakovich. The concert is open to the public at no cost.

For more information, and for reservations for the Nigro concert, please call 207-786-6135.

Frank will perform sonatas No. 1, 2 and 3 from Beethoven’s Op. 2, written in the 1790s. Although composed early in his career, these works clearly foretell what the composer would be capable of at his peak, especially No. 3, in C major.

Glazer’s long career includes numerous recordings, 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.

Glazer taught at the Eastman School of Music for 15 years before retiring to Maine with his wife, Ruth, in 1980. The couple founded the Saco River Festival, which is held in Cornish every summer. A student of pianist Artur Schnabel in the 1930s and ’40s, Glazer is one of the few remaining proteges of that great musician.

Michael will play music by South American composers including Máximo Diego Pujol, Adolfo Luna, Jorge Morel, Jorge Cardoso, Augustine Barrios and Antonio Lauro.

Born in 1971 in California, Nigro earned a bachelor of music degree at the Indiana University School of Music in 2000 and completed his master’s program at California State University Fullerton. He is completing his doctorate at Claremont Graduate University.

Nigro has performed extensively on the West Coast and in the Midwest. His performance at Bates is part of an East Coast tour. His recordings on the Music and Arts label include a collection of Argentine guitar music, Milongas Tristes (2004), featuring compositions by Astor Piazzolla, Pujol, Luna and many others; and the 2005 release Homage to Piazzolla.

“Live chamber music doesn’t get any better than this,” a Portland Press Herald reviewer said of the Chamber Music Festival in 1995. Jennifer Elowitch, a violinist from Portland, and pianist Dena Levine founded the festival in 1994 with the goal of bringing a fresh approach to summer music in Maine — emphasizing new music and hidden gems of the established repertoire, performed by top young players from around the country.

At Bates, the pair will be joined by cellist Andrew Mark, violinist Lydia Forbes and violist Carol Rodland. They will perform  Mozart’s Piano Trio in C Major (K. 548), Kodály’s Serenade for Two Violins and Viola (Op. 12) and Shostakovich’s Quintet in G Minor for Piano and Strings (Op. 57).

The Portland Chamber Music Festival celebrates its 13th season in August 2006. Since its inception, the festival has presented more than 60 concerts featuring nationally acclaimed performers and composers from the United States, Canada, Europe and Latin America. Its concerts have been featured on Maine Public Radio’s “Mainestage” and on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today,” and are recorded and broadcast annually by WGBH Radio, Boston.

Considered one of the world-class quartets of its generation, the St. Lawrence String Quartet visits Bates College for a performance at 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 4, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Admission to this Bates College Concert Series program is $8 for adults and $5 for senior citizens and non-Bates students with ID. For additional information about the series and the concert hall, please click here. For reservations, please call 207-786-6135.

Classical guitarist Michael Nigro closes the series on March 4.

Canada’s premiere chamber ensemble and a regular presence at Maine’s Bay Chamber Concerts, the SLSQ was founded 17 years ago. Its members are violinists Geoff Nuttall and Barry Shiffman, violist Lesley Robertson and cellist Christopher Costanza.

“The St. Lawrence are remarkable not simply for the quality of their music making, exalted as it is,” wrote New Yorker critic Alex Ross, “but for the joy they take in the act of connection.”

The quartet’s Bates program includes music by Beethoven, Mozart and Shostakovich. Founded in 1989, the quartet quickly earned a reputation as Canada’s premiere string quartet, winning both the Banff and Young Concert Artists’ competitions in 1992.

Since 1998 the SLSQ has served as ensemble in residence at Stanford University, and it performs some 100 concerts annually throughout North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and other countries. The SLSQ’s recordings, exclusively on EMI Classics, have garnered numerous awards, including a Juno, a Grammy nomination and a German critics’ award.

The SLSQ enjoys especially close associations with many of North America’s leading composers, including Osvaldo Golijov, R. Murray Shafer, Christos Hatzis, Jonathan Berger, Roberto Sierra, Ka Nin Chan and Mark Applebaum.

The members of the SLSQ are highly regarded as passionate educators. In addition to extensive and innovative programs at Stanford, they frequently give classes while on tour, and in 2005 inaugurated a new visiting chamber music residency at Arizona State University.

A trio led by Andy Statman, who parlayed 1970s acclaim as a “Newgrass” mandolinist into renewed renown as a klezmer clarinetist, opens the 2005-06 Bates College Concert Series on Sunday, Oct. 9.

The series of four 8 p.m. concerts also features the quartet led by jazz saxophonist Kenny Garrett (Jan. 6), the St. Lawrence String Quartet (Feb. 4) and a program of South American music by classical guitarist Michael Nigro (March 4).

Concerts take place on the Bates campus in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. Admission is $8 for adults and $5 for senior citizens and non-Bates students with ID. For additional information about the series and Olin Concert Hall, please see the series Web site. For reservations, please call 207-786-6135.

Statman first caught the music world’s ear as a mandolinist in the jazz-bluegrass fusion genre called Newgrass, working with his own bands and on recording sessions with artists like his mentor David Grisman, Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead.

Influenced by the brilliant Ukrainian-born klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras, Statman took up that instrument and became prominent in the U.S. klezmer revival of the 1980s. Originally the celebration music of Eastern European Jews, American klezmer absorbed sounds from jazz and even rock, and the Andy Statman Klezmer Orchestra was key to that evolution.

In the 1990s, Statman delved deeper into Jewish music, basing extended improvisations on Hasidic prayer melodies. Today, with bassist Jim Whitney and percussionist Larry Eagle, he plays both mandolin and clarinet in a mode honed during many performances at a synagogue in Greenwich Village. In what Statman has called “a very conversational style of playing,” the Andy Statman Trio ranges over a musical landscape stretching from the American South to Eastern Europe to Central Asia.

The Bates College Concert Series presents the Kenny Garrett Quartet at 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 6. Composer and alto saxophonist Garrett is well into the third decade of a career dedicated to sustaining the freshness and vitality of jazz. Firmly rooted in the bebop he performed with legends Miles Davis and Art Blakey, Garrett has also explored rock with Sting and Peter Gabriel, classical music with the New Jersey Symphony and hip hop with Guru and Q-Tip.

Born in Detroit, Garrett was introduced to jazz and the sax at an early age by his father, who played tenor. Detroit offered ample opportunity to explore soul, gospel and classical firsthand. In 1978, Garrett was hired by the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and in the 1980s worked with Blakey and Woody Shaw. In 1986 Davis called, starting a five-year, four-album association that indelibly marked Garrett’s life and career.

His first album as a leader, Introducing Kenny Garrett (Criss Cross) appeared in 1984. He has since recorded for Atlantic and Warner Bros. His eighth and latest Warner title, Standard of Language (2003), delivers some of his most forceful work to date, capturing the spark of the quartet’s live work and showcasing Garrett’s compositions.

The St. Lawrence String Quartet continues the series on Saturday, Feb. 4. Canada’s premiere chamber ensemble and a regular presence at Maine’s Bay Chamber Concerts, the SLSQ is among the world-class quartets of its generation. Founded 16 years ago, the St. Lawrence String Quartet consists of violinists Geoff Nuttall and Barry Shiffman, violist Lesley Robertson and cellist Christopher Costanza.

“The St. Lawrence are remarkable not simply for the quality of their music making, exalted as it is,” wrote New Yorker critic Alex Ross, “but for the joy they take in the act of connection.”

The quartet’s Bates program includes music by Beethoven, Mozart and Shostakovich. The SLSQ regularly delivers traditional quartet repertoire, but is also fervently committed to the work of living composers and to reaching across disciplinary boundaries. The ensemble took part in a project with the renowned Pilobolus Dance Theatre that premiered at Stanford University, and has collaborated with R. Murray Schafer, Osvaldo Golijov and Christos Hatzis — whose compositions are featured on Awakenings, the quartet’s latest recording, released last March on EMI/Angel.

The 2005-06 Bates Concert Series concludes on Saturday, March 4, with a performance by classical guitarist Michael Nigro. Nigro will play music by South American composers including Máximo Diego Pujol, Adolfo Luna, Jorge Morel, Jorge Cardoso, Augustine Barrios and Antonio Lauro.

Born in 1971 in California, Nigro earned a bachelor of music degree at the Indiana University School of Music in 2000, under the direction of guitarist Ernesto Bitetti. He completed his master’s program at California State University Fullerton, where he was a member of the esteemed Fullerton Guitar Orchestra. Nigro is completing his doctorate at Claremont Graduate University under the guidance of Jack Sanders.

Nigro has performed extensively on the West Coast and in the Midwest. His performance at Bates is part of an East Coast tour. His recordings on the Music and Arts label include a collection of Argentine guitar music, Milongas Tristes (2004), featuring compositions by Astor Piazzolla, Pujol, Luna and many others; and the 2005 release Homage to Piazzolla.