The DaPonte String Quartet, bassist Richard Hartshorne and pianist Chiharu Naruse join forces for two of chamber music’s best-loved works at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 14, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, 75 Russell St.

The program comprises Dvorák’s quartet No. 12 in F major, Op. 96 (“American”) and Schubert’s Piano Quintet in A major, Op. 114, D. 667 (“Trout”). Admission is free, but tickets required. For more information, contact this olinarts@bates.edu or 207-786-6135.

The members of the DaPonte quartet are cellist Myles Jordan, violist Kirsten Monke, and violinists Lydia Forbes and Ferdinand “Dino” Liva. Founded in Philadelphia in 1991, the quartet first came to Maine in 1995 on a Rural Residency Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and Chamber Music America.

Unlike many artists who undertake residencies in rural communities, the musicians and their families put down roots in Maine. Today the quartet is a pillar of the state’s chamber music community. Profiled in The New York Times and on CBS Sunday Morning, the foursome has an active performing schedule and is known for its youth education programs.

is a member of the applied music faculties at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, the University of Maine Farmington, the Portland Conservatory of Music and the Bay Chamber School. A native of Japan, she studied with renowned pianist Frank Glazer, an artist in residence at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, following her move to the U.S. in 2002. In addition to her work as a performer, she is a music teacher, chamber music coach and music competition adjudicator and accompanist.

An internationally renowned double bassist, was a member of the Apple Hill Chamber Players for 30 years and served as director of their summer festival. Of his 1997 recording of Bach solo cello suites, adapted for bass, Fanfare Magazine wrote, “Hartshorne proves himself a profound expositor of Bach’s sacred texts.” In 2004, Hartshorne formed the nonprofit Bach With Verse, traveling extensively to bring music to underserved audiences around the world.

Premiered in 1894, the String Quartet No. 12 is one of Czech composer Antonín Dvo?ák’s best-known chamber works. Written while the composer was living in America, and around the same time as his “New World” Symphony, the piece is celebrated for its marriage of Middle European style with characteristically American touches — an African American spiritual, the song of a Midwestern bird, the presence of a train.

Nicknamed the “Trout Quintet” because it refers to an earlier Schubert song titled “The Trout,” the Piano Quintet in A major by Franz Schubert is written for piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass. Written in 1819 but not published until a decade later, after the composer’s death, it’s known in particular for distinctively attractive sonorities, especially in the piano writing.

The concert by pianist James Parakilas, violinist Mary Hunter and cellist Steve Witkin is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Parakilas chairs the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ music department. A piano student of Robert Miller, John Kirkpatrick and Leonard Seeber, he has given solo and chamber performances throughout Maine, including in the clarinet-violin-piano trio Penumbra and with the dancers Carol Dilley and Jill Eng.

Parakilas has also performed as soloist with the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Orchestra, and coaches chamber music at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. He is the editor of the acclaimed social history “Piano Roles: 300 Years of Life with the Piano” (Yale University Press, 2000).

Hunter chairs the music department and coaches chamber musicians at Bowdoin. She studied violin at the Guildhall School of Music in London, and more recently with Rowan Smith and Eva Gruesser. She is a member of the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra.

Witkin is principal cellist with the Colby College Symphony Orchestra and former principal cellist of the Bach Chamber Orchestra of Milwaukee. He plays frequently throughout Maine, and has performed in orchestras and at chamber music recitals in Florida, New York and Italy. He studied with Kermit Moore, David Soyer, Lowell Creitz and George Sopkin. He is an ophthalmologist with Maine Eye Care Associates in Waterville.

Pianist Duncan Cumming ’93 returns to his alma mater with violinist Hilary Cumming, his wife, to perform works of Schubert, Brahms and Dvorák at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The program also includes Duo, a composition by William Matthews, Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Admission is free, but tickets are required. For ticket reservations or more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Cumming is a Maine native, born in Presque Isle and raised in Wiscasset. He graduated with highest honors from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 1993. His playing has been described by the Portland Press Herald as “technically flawless, thoughtful, deliberate and balanced.” Cumming has performed in some of the most prestigious concert halls in the United States and Europe including the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; Merkin Hall and Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City; and the Wallenstein Palace in Prague, Czech Republic. In 2009, he received a grant to record music of Mozart and Weber on Weber’s own 1812 Brodmann fortepiano.

Also this year, Cumming’s book, The Fountain of Youth: The Artistry of Frank Glazer (Tower Books) was published. This book is a portrait of the , an internationally renowned pianist, who taught Cumming.

Cumming received a master’s degree in 1996 from the New England Conservatory, and in 2003 earned a doctorate from Boston University. He is a member of the faculties of Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute and the University at Albany.

Hilary Cumming studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen, Denmark, and has performed around the world. An adjunct professor of violin at the University at Albany, her most recent CD recording was made in August 2008 with the Musicians of the Old Post Road and is available from Meridien Records.

Along with the cellist Sölen Dikener, the Cummings constitute the Capital Piano Trio, the ensemble in residence at the University at Albany. The Cummings have two daughters and a son.