Former piano quartet colleagues reunite in Bates concert

Former colleagues in the late and lamented New England Piano Quartette, pianist Frank Glazer and violist Scott Woolweaver join forces again for a Bates College performance of music by Brahms, Schumann and Herzogenberg at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 27, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Admission is free, but tickets are required. For tickets or more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

For more than 25 years, into the 2000s, Glazer and Woolweaver made music together in the New England Piano Quartette, along with cellist George Sopkin and violinist Werner Torkanowsky, succeeded after his death by Curtis Macomber. The popular quartet was known for the excellence of its performances, its breadth of repertoire (including Torkanowsky’s compositions) and the credentials of its members.

Recently featured on the American Public Media’s popular program The Story, the 97-year-old Glazer, of Topsham, has had a distinguished international career that includes numerous recordings, solo recitals and performances with orchestras and chamber ensembles. With his wife, the late Ruth Glazer, he founded the Saco River Music Festival, held for many years in Cornish, Maine. Glazer has been an artist in residence at Bates since 1980.

Woolweaver is artist associate at Williams College and lecturer in viola and chamber music at Tufts University. He is a regular guest of the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society and is director of the Adult Chamber Music Institute at Kneisel Hall in Blue Hill, Maine.

He founded the Boston Composers String Quartet, which won the silver medal at the 1993 String Quartet Competition and Chamber Music Festa in Osaka, Japan. From 1999-2006 he was a member of the Ives Quartet, based in San Francisco.

At Bates, the pair will perform the Sonatas for Viola and Piano Op. 120, Nos. 1 and 2, by Brahms; Schumann’s “Märchenbilder”; and Herzogenberg’s “Legends,” Op. 62.