The Bowdoin International Music Festival’s premier Festival Fridays concert series opens on June 28 with works by Mozart, Brahms and Shostakovich.

Flutist Linda Chesis will lead Mozart’s Flute Quartet in C Major, K. 285b, accompanied by Laura Lutzke, violin, Carol Rodland, viola, and Rosemary Elliott, cello.

Chesis studied with Jean-Pierre Rampal at the Paris Conservatory, has been a top prizewinner at the Paris and Barcelona International Competitions, and has been called “one of the most exciting and dynamic flutists of her generation.”

The Grammy Award-winning Ying Quartet, in its 11th year in residence at the Festival, follows with Johannes Brahms’ String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 51, No. 2.

In the finale, renowned violinist Ilya Kaler leads a power-packed ensemble in Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G Minor, Op. 57. Olga Kaler plays second violin; Karen Dreyfus viola; Steven Doane, cello; and Boris Slutsky, piano.

Festival Fridays concerts are held at 7:30 p.m. in Brunswick High School’s Crooker Theater. Tickets are $40.

Beethoven, Bach and Schubert

On July 1, the Bowdoin Festival’s Monday Sonatas season (an opportunity to experience the Festival’s remarkable faculty in duets and solo performances in the intimate environs of Studzinski Recital Hall) gets underway with works by Britten, Grieg and Hindemith.

Monday Sonatas concerts are held at 7:30 p.m. in Studzinski Recital Hall on the Bowdoin College campus. Tickets are $40.

Wednesday Upbeat!

The July 3 Wednesday Upbeat! concert opens with Huang Ruo’s Two Shades, a work commissioned by the Festival for this season.

Ruo is a Chinese-born American composer, pianist and vocalist who now lives in the United States. His writing spans orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater and modern dance, multi-media, folk rock and film.

Ensembles who have premiered and performed his music include the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and many others.

Wednesday Upbeat! concerts are held at 7:30 p.m. in Studzinski Recital Hall on the Bowdoin campus. Tickets are $40.

July 5 concert

The Bowdoin Festival will celebrate the Independence Day holiday on Friday, July 5 with an all-American program featuring Aaron Copland’s “A Lincoln Portrait” The works of Charles Ives, George Gershwin, and Samuel Barber will also be presented.

Festival Fridays concerts are held at 7:30 p.m. in Brunswick High School’s Crooker Theater. Tickets are $40.

Artists of tomorrow

A full slate of Artists of Tomorrow student concerts, featuring the Festival’s top students, will be held on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings at 7:30 p.m. in Studzinski Recital Hall. Student concert programs are announced the day of the concert.

To receive email announcements of student concert programs, visit www.bowdoinfestival.org. Suggested donation $10.

Bowdoin Festival extra

The Bowdoin Festival’s educational series, Bowdoin Festival Extra, continues with three instrument demonstrations and a talk on life as an orchestra musician.

The demonstrations take place on Sunday (percussion instructor Luke Rinderknecht in Bowdoin’s Gibson Hall, Room 10); Tuesday (Kim Laskowski, the Associate Principal bassoonist of the New York Philharmonic); and Friday (pianist Emma Tahmiziàn), both in Gibson Hall, Room 101.

On Wednesday, July 3, David Coucheron will discuss “The Orchestral Life,” also in Gibson Hall, Room 101. All four free events are at 4 p.m. and open to the public.

A complete listing of all festival performances and ticket information can be found at www.bowdoinfestival.org. For more information, call 207-725-3895.

The Bowdoin International Music Festival was founded in 1964 by Lewis Kaplan and the late Robert K. Beckwith of Bowdoin College.

The festival's mission is to provide Maine audiences with classical music performed to the highest artistic standards, and to provide gifted young musicians from around the world with an opportunity to study chamber music with world-class artists.