LEWISTON – The ensemble Music for a while will perform a program of Renaissance, Baroque and early classical music at 8 p.m. Friday, March 6, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall at Bates College. Featured will be music by J.S. Bach, Georg Telemann and Henry Purcell.

The ensemble, which takes its name from a song by Purcell, has performed extensively throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, as well as on Maine Public Radio’s “Live at Eleven.”

Among the members of Music for a while are soprano Courtney Curtis; Rebecca Shaw, who plays baroque cello; and Seth Warner, who plays lute and theorbo, a long-necked lute with additional bass strings.

The concert program includes songs by late-Renaissance composers John Dowland and Giulio Caccini, songs by Purcell, an aria by Bach and the cantata “Wer sehnet sich nach Kerker, Stein und Ketten” (“Who longs for dungeon, stone and chains”) by classical composer Telemann.

One of the most promising early-music ensembles to emerge from Boston in recent years, Music for a while celebrates the varied repertoire for bowed and plucked strings with voice. Programs have included music of Colonial American composers Francis Hopkinson and William Billings, Elizabethan masters Byrd and Dowland, and forays into the dark and introspective works of Josquin des Prez and Purcell.