The Olin Arts Center is launching a new music series, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½Downtown, in downtown Lewiston with jazz and classical concerts featuring ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty members.

Pianist Tom Snow and guitarist John Smedley play jazz at 5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26.

Violinist Dean Stein and pianist Chiharu Naruse perform music by J.S. Bach and Beethoven at 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 3.

Both ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½Downtown 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.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½Downtown series “came from the simple idea of trying to branch out and essentially ‘share’ the music we have here on campus out in the community,” says Seth Warner, the college’s concert hall manager.

“We hope we attract an audience that might not normally visit our campus — but also hope we can capture the attention of members of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community who’d like to know more about the people, places and things that make Lewiston-Auburn the ‘L/A’ of the East.”

Snow, the director of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Jazz Band, 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, and he frequently accompanies folk singer Jonathan Edwards.

Physics professor and jazz guitarist John Smedley.

Smedley, a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ physics professor, is a jazz guitarist known for performances solo and with the Three Point Trio, the Tom Snow Trio and other combos. A specialist in atomic physics, he also teaches musical acoustics and the physics of electronic sound, and offers a jazz guitar course that provides a historical survey of the genre and individual instruction on the guitar.

Violinist Stein has performed throughout the world with orchestras, chamber music ensembles and as soloist. He is particularly well-known from his work with a previous incarnation of the Maine-based DaPonte String Quartet.

Stein now performs with the Atlantic Piano Trio and is concertmaster of the Maine Music Society. With oboist Kathleen McNerney, he founded the VentiCordi (“winds and strings”) music festival in Kennebunk in 2009. Since 2003, he has directed the historic Arcady Music Festival in Bar Harbor.

Stein is on the faculty of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and Bowdoin colleges and has taught at New England Conservatory’s Preparatory Division, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of Maryland at College Park and the New England Suzuki Institute.

Naruse holds master’s degrees in music performance and music instruction from the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. She has performed throughout the world in recitals and piano competitions including the Hyogo Piano Competition in Japan (silver prize) and the International Mozart Wettbewerb in Salzburg, Austria.

In 2002, Naruse moved to the United States to study under Frank Glazer, the renowned pianist and artist in residence at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. She has performed solo recitals at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and the University of Maine campuses in Farmington and Augusta; played concerts with Glazer, the Portland String Quartet and the DaPonte quartet; performed piano concertos by Beethoven, Mozart and Rachmaninoff with the Augusta Symphony; and recently concluded concert tours of France and Japan.

Naruse is a member of the applied music faculties at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, the University of Maine at Farmington, the Portland Conservatory of Music and the Bay Chamber School, and has a teaching studio in Hallowell.

Directed by Maine pianist Thomas Snow, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Jazz Band will perform on April 1. The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Jazz Band is a full big band of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students that performs at least one concert per semester in a wide variety of styles.

This concert includes contemporary selections such as “Song for Bilbao” by Pat Metheny, as well as such traditional big-band selections as “Opus One” by Sy Oliver.

• Wednesday, April 1, at 7 p.m.
• Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. FMI:  207-786-6135

Snow leads one of the small ensembles and Greg Waters, a tenor saxophonist and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ junior from London, leads the other. The concert is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

To see all events open to the public at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ this month, visit the online Public Events Calendar. To receive the printed monthly calendar ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Invites You, please call 207-786-6330.

The program includes music by Gerry Mulligan, the Brecker Brothers and Duke Ellington.

Several members of the 20-piece ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ band will be featured as soloists, including trumpeter Dan Roop, a first-year student from Littleton,Mass.; flutist Sophia Budianto, a sophomore from Singapore; Waters; trombonist Ben Smeltzer, a first-year student from Waterbury Center, Vt.; and alto saxophonist Brian Haswell, a first-year student from Westport, Conn.

One of Maine’s busiest and most versatile pianists, Tom Snow brings two bandmates to perform in an evening of jazz. The event starts at 7 p.m. Sunday, March 2, in Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

A South Portland resident, Snow enjoys a varied musical career that includes performing as bandleader and sideman, as well as teaching and studio work. A cum laude graduate of the Berklee College of Music, Boston, Snow is well-known in Maine’s jazz scene and has toured through much of the nation as an accompanist to such artists as noted Irish tenor John McNally.

In Maine, Snow has worked with disco satirists Motor Booty Affair, singer-songwriter Kate Schrock and jazz guitarist Mark Kleinhaut. He has made two recordings as a leader: his debut CD Northern Standard Time (1997) and Christmas at Mast Cove (2001). Snow is currently music director at Portland’s Cheverus High School and a member of the piano department at the .

Accompanying Snow will be bassist and drummer Les Harris Jr. A native of Portland, Lyden has studied jazz and classical bass and has been playing for more than 30 years. One of the first-call jazz bassists in northern New England, the versatile Lyden has worked with John La Porta, Roswell Rudd, Frank Foster, Herb Pomeroy, Tiger Okoshi, Jackie King and Bobby Watson. He can be heard on several jazz and folk recordings and has performed in Hungary, Germany and the Netherlands.

Like Snow, is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music. He studied extensively with Alan Dawson. He is a lecturer in music at the University of New Hampshire and a member of the UNH Faculty Jazz Sextet. From 1983 to 1995, Harris played drums for the jazz vocal group The Ritz, with performances worldwide and seven recordings for the Pausa and Denon labels. Harris has also toured with the Artie Shaw Orchestra and performed with Clark Terry, Diana Krall, Scott Hamilton and Gray Sargent. He also teaches at the University of Southern Maine and Phillips Exeter Academy.

The concert is open to the public at no cost. For more information about the concert, please call 207-786-6135.