Regarded as one of the world’s foremost players of harpsichord and fortepiano, Andreas Staier comes to Bates College to perform fortepiano music by Haydn at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 15, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Tickets, costing $12 for general admission and $6 for seniors and students, can be purchased at www.batestickets.com. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

The concert was originally scheduled for last fall, but postponed because of illness.

Performing on a Walther fortepiano replica built by R.J. Regier of Freeport, Staier will offer the Bates audience sonatas and variations by Franz Josef Haydn. He is playing this particular program only twice during his current tour, at Bates and at Carnegie Hall.

The artist’s extensive catalog of recordings includes a 2005 collection of this music on the German subsidiary of the Harmonia Mundi label.

Born in Göttingen, Germany, Staier studied modern piano and harpsichord in Hannover and Amsterdam. From 1983 to 1986, he was the harpsichordist of Musica Antiqua Köln, with which he toured and recorded extensively.

Today Staier performs throughout Europe, the United States and Japan as a soloist and with orchestras such as Concerto Köln, Freiburger Barockorchester, the Akademie für alte Musik Berlin and the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées Paris. Staier has made many recordings of works from the Baroque through early Romantic eras. His solo work is often broadcast on the BBC.

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.

Tickets are $6 and can be purchased at batestickets.com. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Written by Katz and first directed by the late Tony award-winner Charles Nelson Reilly, Muse of Fire revisits Katz’s experiences at the famed Pierre Monteux School for musical conductors in Hancock, Maine, where he studied under Charles Bruck. As the master teacher at Monteux for 26 years, Bruck is remembered as much for his temper as for an acerbic wit and profound belief in the power and importance of music.

Affording a rare insight into the process of bringing classical music to life, the play follows Katz’s complex relationship with Bruck. It’s a progression from fearing the difficult maestro to seeing him as a mentor, and the narrative, says Katz, is meant to form “perfect arcs: from hatred to love, failure to triumph, life to death.”

Muse of Fire, which premiered in Maine in 2005, is the brainchild of the multitalented Katz, an award-winning composer, conductor, writer and arts entrepreneur. He has a long history with the arts in Maine, having founded and conducted Opera Maine and the Chamber Orchestra of Maine.

Muse of Fire appeared around Maine to rave reviews. The Bar Harbor Times described it as “variously funny, horrifying, poignant and sometimes so suspenseful it’s like watching a close football game.” The Bangor Daily News had similar sentiments, calling it “a searing and unforgettable portrait of the man who shaped a generation of conductors who hear the music with their hearts.”

Music by more than a dozen beloved composers is woven into the fabric of the story. The combination of story and orchestration helps create what one reviewer described as “the most compelling theatrical celebration of classical music since ‘Amadeus.’ ”

Learn more: www.museoffiretheplay.org/index.html.

Frank Glazer, a pianist of international renown whose professional career began during the 1930s, begins his 2009-10 survey of the complete cycle of 32 Beethoven piano sonatas with a concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 18, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

All performances in the series and a related Nov. 8 lecture are open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or use this olinarts@bates.edu.

Glazer’s series coincides with a parallel effort by the Auryn Quartet, which resumes its performances of the Beethoven string quartet cycle at Bates in January, presented by the Bates Concert Committee.

Asked about the characteristics of Beethoven’s music that particularly strike him, Glazer points to the composer’s imagination — one so fertile that he scarcely needed to reuse an idea.

It was this capacity that enabled the composer to, as Glazer puts it, “modulate to any key from anywhere.” More broadly, Beethoven had “the ability to extend a simple idea and have it continue and evolve. He also had such a sense of proportion that, at the point when you are just about to become bored, he changes — he knows just where to change so that you’re always alert to what he’s doing.”

“Frank Lloyd Wright once told me that Beethoven was his favorite composer,” says the 94-year-old Glazer, “because he was a great constructer.”

Taking the Beethoven cycle chronologically, Glazer’s September concert comprises the three Op. 2 sonatas and the Op. 7 sonata. He performs the subsequent installments, all in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, at:

7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 9, in a program composed of the three Op. 10 sonatas and the Op. 13 (“Pathétique”);

7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, with the Op. 14, 22, 26 and 27 sonatas, the last set including the popular “Moonlight” sonata;

3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 6, with the Op. 28 and the three Op. 31 sonatas;

3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 17, with the Op. 49, 53, 54 and 57 (“Appassionata”) sonatas;

3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 7, with the Op. 78, 79, 81A and 90 sonatas;

7:30 p.m. Friday, March 19, with Op. 101 and 106 (“Hammerklavier”);

and, finally, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 9, with the Op. 109, 110 and 111 sonatas.

In a related lecture, Glazer discusses his approach to and preparation for this musical feat at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 8, in the Olin auditorium. A reception follows. The event is sponsored by the Bates College Friends of Music.

Glazer has taught at Bates since 1980, coming from a faculty position at the Eastman School. “This being my 30th year at Bates, I thought it would be a good idea for me to do all the sonatas,” he says. In a professional career spanning more than 70 years, “I have played all of them but four.”

In a era whose pianists often strive for the gloss of mechanical precision and a big sound, Glazer instead makes all else secondary to the music’s own message. “He has thought everything through and tried to get at the core of what the music is about. Everything he does is about that,” says colleague James Parakilas, a pianist himself and the James L. Moody Jr. Family Professor of Performing Arts at Bates.

Glazer, of Topsham, has had a distinguished career that includes numerous recordings, solo recitals and performances with orchestras and chamber ensembles, including the New England Piano Quartette, of which he was a founder. With his wife, the late Ruth Glazer, he founded the Saco River Music Festival, held for many years in Cornish, Maine.

In October 2006, Glazer celebrated the 70th anniversary of his 1936 New York City debut by performing that debut program at Bates. Last March, he reprised the program that he played in his Carnegie Hall debut, 60 years ago to the day.

In its Maine debut, the Battleworks Dance Company appears at the Bates Dance Festival in the world premiere of a collaboration created with composer-percussionist Carl Landa. Performances take place at 8 p.m. Thursday and Saturday, July 16 and 18, in Bates College’s Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St.

Tickets are $20 for the general public and $12 for students and seniors and can be purchased by calling 207-786-6161 after July 6.

Another festival event takes place at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 21. The panel discussion “Global Exchange: Sharing Across Cultures,” featuring international choreographers exploring their work and the cultural environments in which they create it, is open to the public at no cost in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Led by Parsons Dance Company veteran Robert Battle, Battleworks is considered one of America’s most promising and aesthetically daring ensembles. At Bates, the company’s new work is an alloy of modern dance and African traditions. Also on the program are timeless and edgy dances from the Battleworks repertory.

The new piece builds upon Battle’s 2004 piece “Juba,” an athletic work, commissioned by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, that explores the ecstasy of dance. It springs from the community-oriented, improvisational nature of the African drumming circle, celebrating the power of that tradition to bring people of all cultures together.

Battle was a member of the Parsons company from 1994 to 2001 and began setting his own work on the company in 1998. Parsons performed his choreography across the United States and internationally, and featured it in several New York seasons.

As an independent choreographer, Battle has been commissioned by Hubbard Street Dance, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, River North Dance Company, Koresh Dance Company, the Introdans Ensemble and PARADIGM.

In 2001 Battle founded Battleworks Dance Company, and the company premiered in August 2002 at the World Dance Alliance’s Global Assembly in Düsseldorf, Germany. The company was selected as the American representative to the festival thanks to its unique outlook on the future of dance.

Boldly pushing the boundaries that have traditionally defined modern dance, Battle takes his troupe of dancers into uncharted aesthetic realms. Battleworks has performed extensively in New York and across the country at such venues as The Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, American Dance Festival and the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.

In the words of a New York Sun reviewer, “Battle makes an audience sit up and take notice, marvel, even laugh. His work reaches over the edge of the stage and communicates with people.”

In addition to mainstage performances, the Bates Dance Festival offers a selection of free and low-cost events. Additional information, including ticket prices and event locations, is available on the festival Web site: http://www.batesdancefestival.org/

With the theme Musical Legacies of South and Southeast Asia, Bates College students and faculty, as well as internationally esteemed performers, present the college’s World Music Week from March 5 through March 15.

Performers include the Bates College Orchestra and Bates Gamelan Orchestra, Indian dancer Aniruddha Knight and Indonesian composer Nano S. (See the complete schedule.)

Sponsored by the Bates music department, festival events are open to the public at no cost. Except as noted, performances take place in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. For more information, call 207-786-6135.

“This year’s concept pays tribute to the profound traditional artistic roots of these regions, but at the same time acknowledges the strong innovative spirit evident in this year’s artists,” says festival organizer Gina Fatone, assistant professor of music. “The artists hold a deep reverence for their heritages, yet are driven to push the boundaries of tradition, creating something vibrant and new.”

Workshops begin the series on March 5. In a concert at 8 p.m. March 7, the Bates College Orchestra offers a program reflecting influences from around the globe, as well as works inspired by music of Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Hiroya Miura directs the orchestra.

Expert in the classical South Indian music and dance genre called “bharata natyam,” dancer Aniruddha Knight and his ensemble offer workshops on March 5 and 6, and a performance at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 8. On that occasion, Knight and the ensemble perform From the Heart of a Tradition, a new interpretation of this traditional form.

Knight’s dance reveals the profound musicality, mastery of technique and improvisational skill that distinguish his family’s hereditary style. But he also represents the face of young America: biracial, bicultural and, as an artist, completely contemporary. He and his ensemble were among 15 companies to receive production and touring support from the National Dance Project in 2007 and 2008, and their 2005 tour was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Bates residency of Knight and his ensemble is made possible by a grant from the National Dance Project, a program of the New England Foundation for the Arts.

Closing World Music Week is a performance by the Bates College Gamelan Orchestra, joined by guest artists including Indonesian composer Nano S., at 8 p.m. March 15.

“Gamelan” refers to the large bronze percussion orchestras of Java and Bali, Indonesia. The Bates Gamelan Orchestra performs traditional and contemporary music of West and Central Java, as well as new music for gamelan by North American composers.

Nano S. is widely viewed as one of Indonesia’s most important and influential musicians. He has taught and toured extensively in Japan, Canada and the U.S. At Bates, he is a Mellon Learning Associate, supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Also performing are drummer Undang Sumarna, bamboo flute player Burhan Sukarma and dancer Ben Arcangel.

Directed by John Corrie, a member of the Bates music faculty since 1982, the Bates College Choir and other student musicians offer two very different programs in December. Both are open to the public at no cost.

At 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Dec. 3-4, the college choir performs “Carmina Burana,” Carl Orff’s driving, evocative setting of 13th-century poems dedicated to nature, sensuality and the inexorable machinery of fate. The performance takes place in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

At 5 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 12, the choir and singers from Bates a cappella groups gather in the college chapel, College Street, for “Carols by Candlelight: A Communal Singing of Carols.” Corrie will accompany on the chapel’s 1982 Wolff organ. For more information, please call 207-786-8272.

“Carmina Burana” may get its broadest exposure nowadays through the popularity of its opening theme as end-of-the-world movie soundtrack music. But in fact Carl Orff’s monumental choral work is a musical setting of poems, dating back to the 12th century, that celebrate nature, fate, tavern society and especially love.

“Carmina Burana” is the title that Johann Andreas Schmeller gave to the collection of these poems, some in German and most in Latin, that he published in 1847. Their source was a 13th-century German manuscript from a Benedictine abbey in the Bavarian city of Benediktbeuren.

“I based the decision to perform the ‘Carmina’ on the desire to find a large choral work that is as much an orchestra work,” says Corrie. Accompanying the 72-voice choir will be a 50-piece orchestra, composed mostly of students.

“This music has been used in so many ways — for movie soundtracks and commercials for jewelry, automobiles and even football,” Corrie notes. “People will certainly recognize this music.”

For the year’s edition of the annual “Carols by Candlelight” program, members of the choir and four a cappella groups — the all-female Merimanders, the all-male Deansmen and Manic Optimists and the mixed-gender Crosstones — will sing holiday music. The program is still being finalized, but will include two contemporary works, Morten Lauridsen’s “O Magnum Mysterium” and John Tavener’s “The Lamb.”

A Lewiston resident, Corrie is a lecturer in music at Bates, where he directs the choir and teaches harpsichord, organ, voice and musicianship. Since 1982, he has been organist and choir director of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Falmouth. He performs throughout Maine and New England as a singer and on harpsichord and organ.

“My particular historic musical interest is in the Baroque,” Corrie says, “particularly works by Bach, Rameau and DuPhly on the harpsichord. But working with students has allowed me to expand my interests in other time periods as a pianist-accompanist.”

“I would characterize my work with Bates students as the sharing of the joy of music making, no matter what the literature,” he says. “Their energy and skill bring the delight and wonder to creating wonderful sounds together.”

Corrie holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory, Northwestern University and Yale University. In 1972-73, he attended the renowned Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, Austria, as a Fulbright-Hays scholar.

The Bates College Modern Dance Company presents From Far and Near, a program of dances by student and guest choreographers, at 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, Bates College, Russell Street. Admission is free.

Seven dances are featured in “From Far and Near.” Two are by students. “So Many Ways to Where” was choreographed by Sara Miller, a senior from Farmington, to music by Ani DiFranco. “Transport” was choreographed by Devon Fitchett, a senior from Woburn, Mass., to music by Shamou, a percussionist born in Iran, living in Portland and a veteran of collaborations with such dance companies as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Mark Morris Dance Group.

All for 15 or more dancers, the guest choreographers’ works are: “Ellington Suite,” by Stephanie Powell, with music by Duke Ellington; “Changing Winds,” by Lisa Schmidt, to music by Wendy Carlos and La Llorona; “Muse of Fire,” by Ben Munisteri, with music from the “Run Lola Run” film soundtrack; “Almanac,” by Sara Sweet Rabidoux; and “The 8:10 Express,” by Cathy Young, with music by a number of classic jazz artists.

Stephanie Powell has choreographed for numerous companies, colleges and universities throughout the East and Midwest and currently teaches at the Baltimore School for the Arts and Towson University. She is artistic director of the Stephanie Powell Danse Ensemble, the Glory to God Arts Ministry, and In the Spirit Dance Ministry. Powell is a director of the Baltimore Dance Tech Inc. Dance Center, which has a comprehensive dance program with more than 100 students.

Lisa Schmidt was a member of the Trisha Brown Company from 1985 to 1992 and has taught and performed throughout the United States and abroad. In addition to performing, this resident of western Massachusetts teaches dance and healing through movement. She is a certified practitioner of body-mind centering.

Ben Munisteri is a New York City-based choreographer whose ensemble performs regularly in New York, at festivals and at other venues around the country. He has created dances for Pennsylvania Dance Theater, Danceworks Performance Company (Milwaukee), and many college companies. He recently received two consecutive major grants from the Jerome Foundation for the creation of new works.

Sara Sweet Rabidoux is the founder and artistic director of Boston-based dance company hoi polloi. She has taught at the Bates Dance Festival’s Youth Arts Program since 1995 and has been a guest artist at a variety of colleges and universities. Hoi polloi has danced for the Bates Dance Festival, Jacob’s Pillow, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Flynn Theater and The Philly Fringe Festival.

Cathy Young, artistic director of Cathy Young Dance, works in an eclectic mix of styles drawing on jazz, modern, contact improvisation, gymnastics and social dance. She has set her pieces on professional companies and universities around the country, and has presented her duet work with husband Chris Aiken in New York and elsewhere. A nationally recognized teacher, she is currently visiting lecturer in dance at the University of Illinois, where she is pursuing her M.F.A.

For more information about this performance, call the box office at 207-786-6161.