Pianist Jon Nakamatsu. (Christian Steiner)

Classical pianist Jon Nakamatsu performs at 乐播传媒 College at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 27, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. Praised for his clean technique and deep musical intuition, Nakamatsu has an impressive repertoire that ranges from Bach to present-day composers. He last performed at 乐播传媒 in 2003.

Admission is $15, available at . A limited number of free tickets for 乐播传媒 faculty, staff, and students and seniors 65-plus are available at . Nakamatsu’s appearance is supported by a generous gift to the college by Atsuko Hirai, Kazushige Hirasawa Professor Emerita of History, who died last year. For more information, contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Nakamatsu took the world of classical piano by storm when, over many more-favored competitors, he walked away with the gold medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1997. He was the first American to win the title at the prestigious competition in 16 years.

It was a classic underdog story: Nakamatsu, a high school teacher, had studied with one piano teacher since age 6 and had never gone to a conservatory or college to study music.

Named 1998鈥檚 Debut Artist of the Year by National Public Radio, Nakamatsu has toured extensively聽鈥� from Carnegie Hall to the White House, from Boston and Chicago to Milan, Paris, Budapest and Asia.

He has recorded 12 critically acclaimed CDs with Harmonia Mundi USA. His 2007 collaboration with the Rochester Philharmonic on Gershwin鈥檚 Concerto in F and 鈥淩hapsody in Blue鈥� reached No. 3 on Billboard鈥檚 classical chart and stayed on the chart for almost six months.

Critics across the board applaud Nakamatsu for his crisp and elegant style. Bernard Holland of The New York Times says, 鈥淭his young American pianist has stunning technical control and can do anything at the piano he wants.鈥� Music reviewer Richard Scheinin describes Nakamatsu鈥檚 playing as 鈥渇luid like Chopin, but also with crisp springboarding chords.鈥�

Whether he is playing solo or with an entire orchestra, Nakamatsu remains in control of the entire musical landscape, delivering energetic and sophisticated performances with a down-to-earth charm and nimble fingerwork.

Nakamatsu often performs and records with clarinetist Jon Manasse. The two are co-directors of the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival. He serves as a judge in several piano competitions.

乐播传媒 historian Hirai had a special regard for Nakamatsu鈥檚 artistry. A gifted soprano in her own right, Hirai’s love of history was matched by her devotion to music.

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

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 乐播传媒 College.

A member of the applied music faculty at 乐播传媒, 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 乐播传媒 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 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.

The 乐播传媒 College Concert Series resumes at 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 29, with a performance by the highly accomplished pianist Awadagin Pratt in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Bringing to 乐播传媒 a program by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Rachmaninov, Pratt is acclaimed for his musical insight and for intensely involving performances that receive tremendous response from audiences and the press throughout the United States.

Admission is $8 for adults and $5 for senior citizens and non-乐播传媒 students with ID. For additional information about the series and Olin Concert Hall, please click . For reservations, please call 207-786-6135.

The series closes March 11 with the Quartetto di Venezia, an Italian string quartet celebrating its 20th anniversary season.

Raised in the Illinois town of Normal, the prodigiously talented is anything but. His adventurous interpretations of traditional repertoire, his technical and expressive command and the sheer breadth of his talent have captured worldwide attention.

The son of college professors, one from Sierra Leone and the other from Texas, Pratt (whose first name is pronounced ow-ah-DAH-jin) was born in Pittsburgh and raised in Normal, where his parents moved to accept positions at Illinois State University.

He entered the University of Illinois at age 16 and subsequently enrolled in the Peabody Conservatory of Music, becoming that school’s first student to receive diplomas in three performance areas — piano, violin and conducting. (Today he is increasingly active as a conductor.)

Winner of the 1992 Naumburg International Piano Competition, Pratt has performed solo recitals and orchestral dates in Europe, Asia and across the United States. He has appeared with the New York Philharmonic and the Baltimore, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and National symphonies, and performs duo recitals with cellist Zuill Bailey.

Pratt was named one of the 50 Leaders of Tomorrow in Ebony Magazine’s 50th anniversary issue and performed twice at the White House at the invitation of President and Mrs. Clinton. An Angel/EMI recording artist, he released his debut album, “A Long Way From Normal,” in 1994 and his most recent, an all-Bach disc with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, in 2002.

Pratt is an assistant professor of piano and an artist in residence at the College Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati.

Music lovers have the chance to enjoy two distinctly different musical traditions at 乐播传媒 College on Friday, April 5.

At 4 p.m. in Pettengill Hall’s Perry Atrium, the 乐播传媒 College Javanese Gamelan Ensemble performs the absorbing, percussion-based court music of the Indonesian island of Java.

A program in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall features music by Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin, performed by Frank Glazer, a resident artist at 乐播传媒 since 1980 and arguably Maine’s best-known pianist. Please note that contrary to some published reports, the correct time for this concert is 8 p.m. Both concerts are free and open to the public.

The gamelan ensemble performance is directed by Rose Pruiksma, assistant professor of music at 乐播传媒. She and the 10 or so student performers will be joined by two guest artists. Pak Kuwat is a music master from Banyumas, a community in west central Java. Kuwat, who is accomplished on every instrument in the gamelan, has coached the 乐播传媒 players since the beginning of March. Also performing is singer, composer and scholar Jody Diamond, director of the American Gamelan Institute, in Lebanon, N.H.

Gamelan music is played by a large ensemble using mostly percussion instruments 鈥� drums, tuned gongs and a variety of pieces akin to xylophones 鈥� along with voice, bamboo flute and a two-string device like a fiddle. Gamelan’s roots go back at least to the ninth century A.D., and today’s music also shows a variety of influences, notably Chinese, Indian and Arabic.

In structure and sound, gamelan is surprising to the unaccustomed ear. The percussion instruments create pure, sustaining tones that seem to come from all directions. The musical structure emerges from a sort of social order within the ensemble 鈥� one family of instruments laying out the basic melody, another elaborating on it, the different gongs cueing phrases and transitions.

The Indonesian islands of Bali and Java have distinctly different gamelan styles, although the two share instruments and musical fundamentals. “The Javanese style generally tends to be more mellow and stately,” where the Balinese is typically harder-edged and busier, even frenetic, Pruiksma explains.

One reason gamelan is important in the academic setting, Pruiksma believes, is that “it gives students another way to experience making music. One of the nicest things, I think, about having the gamelan ensemble is that it is easy to incorporate students who have no prior musical experience.”

“In fact, having no prior musical experience can actually be an advantage, because you don’t have any of the preconceptions about how music is ‘supposed’ to go that you pick up when you train in Western classical music,” she says.

Glazer’s program, meanwhile, traces a path through territory more familiar to Western ears, from the Classical to the Romantic eras in Europe. The oldest work he’ll perform is Beethoven’s Sonata in G major (Op. 79), from 1809. This light, melodious sonata is seldom heard but nicely represents the early Beethoven.

In 1827, the year before he died, Schubert wrote two sets each of four impromptus. This program features the second set (D. 935; Op. 142). The impromptus are introspective, lyrical works with an improvisational air, and as such make an appropriate stylistic bridge to the highly Romantic Chopin that ends the evening.

In fact, some commentators hear echoes of late Schubert in Chopin’s Sonata No. 3 in B Minor (Op. 58), written in 1844. One of the Polish pianist’s great masterpieces, this work’s four movements cut a wide swath through the tragic side of the emotional spectrum, from the somber slow movement to the famed funeral march.

Glazer is an artist of international stature who 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 proteges of that great musician remaining. 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.

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

Glazer’s program traces a musical path from the Classic to the Romantic eras. The oldest work is Beethoven’s Sonata in G major (Op. 79), from 1809. Seldom performed, this light, melodious sonata nevertheless nicely represents the early Beethoven.

In 1827, the year before he died, Schubert wrote two sets each of four impromptus. This program features the second set (D. 935; Op. 142). The impromptus are introspective, lyrical works with an improvisational air, and as such make an appropriate stylistic bridge to the highly Romantic Chopin that ends the evening.

In fact, some commentators hear echoes of late Schubert in Chopin’s Sonata No. 3 in B Minor (Op. 58), written in 1844. One of the Polish pianist’s great masterpieces, this work’s four movements cut a wide swath through the tragic side of the emotional spectrum, from the somber slow movement to the famed funeral march.

Glazer is an artist of international stature who 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 proteges of that great musician remaining. 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.

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

James Parakilas, fortepiano, will performs works from the classical period Feb. 1. Vocalists Carmen Nadeau and Paul Jalbert will present a program of popular songs and show tunes Feb 8. 乐播传媒 senior Sarah Teillon, alto, assisted by John Corrie, piano, will present Sea Pictures, a song cycle by British composer Edward Elgar, Feb. 15. There will be no concert Feb. 22 when the college is in winter recess. Joshua Fix, 乐播传媒 class of 1999, will present a program of original compositions Feb. 29.

Additional information about the 乐播传媒 Noonday Concert Series is available by calling the Olin Arts Center at 207-786-6l35.

Hagiwara will perform a 90-minute program consisting of Schubert, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Chopin. Hagiwara studies piano with 乐播传媒 artist-in-residence Frank Glazer.

For further information, call the Olin Arts Center at 207-786-6135.