LEWISTON — Concerts at Bates College will feature choral music for the holiday season and compositions by Bates faculty played by a renowned visiting string quartet.

The Bates College Choir, directed by John Corrie, will perform the holiday program at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 30 and Dec. 1. 

On Tuesday, Dec. 4, at 7:30 p.m., the Momenta Quartet, whose repertoire ranges from the classics to contemporary, will perform new music by Bates composers. Both concerts are in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The choir will perform Benjamin Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols,” Eric Whitacre’s “Five Hebrew Love Songs” and “Das Cartas,” composed by Hiroya Miura, associate professor of music at Bates.

An internationally esteemed 20th-century English composer, Britten composed operas, orchestral music, vocal and choral works, and chamber music. Scored for three-part chorus, solo voices and harp, “Ceremony of Carols” marked Britten’s return from America to wartime England in 1942.

Each of Whitacre’s five songs captures a moment that he and his wife, soprano Hila Plitmann, shared and which she rendered as a poem that he set to music.

Miura’s “Das Cartas,” composed in 1998, is scored for mixed-voice choir, harp and koto, a Japanese stringed instrument.

The Momenta program includes the premiere of Bates composers Miura and William Matthews, as well as music by Debussy, Kee Yong Chong and Jason Kao Hwang.

Praised by The New York Times for its “focused, fluid performance,” the Momenta Quartet has premiered more than 50 works in the past seven years and has collaborated with more than 80 composers.

Based in New York City, the quartet performs nationally and internationally. Members of Momenta are violinists Emilie-Anne Gendron and Adda Kridler, violist Stephanie Griffin and cellist Michael Haas.

Inspired by the current Bates College Museum of Art astrophotography exhibition “Starstruck,” Miura’s “Singularity” adapts cosmic radiation readings to serve as the harmonic basis for his piece.

The imagery in “Mare Tranquillitas,” a musical and video piece composed by Matthews, Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music at Bates, incorporates astrophotographs from “Starstruck” and photographs of Momenta’s instruments.

Admission to the choir concerts is free, but tickets are required. Admission to the Momenta Quartet performance is $12, with tickets available at batestickets.com. Free tickets are available to the first 100 seniors and students. Reserve by calling 786-6163. For more information, call 786-6135.