LOVELL — Subtle, inventive, and full of joy – those are some of the ways listeners have described the piano music of Jed Wilson. Jed will be opening the summer season on at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, June 25 at the Brick Church for the Performing Arts in Lovell with a concert of original compositions and folk songs. Saxophonist Gideon Forbes will join him for the evening.

Ticket $10 for adults and $5 for children 12 and may be purchased at the door.

Wilson earned a Bachelor of Music at New England Conservatory and has subsequently performed widely throughout North America, often serving as accompanist to renowned vocalist (and Lovell native) Heather Masse, with whom he has appeared several times on “Prairie Home Companion.” He has also worked with Aoife O’Donovan and Rushad Eggleston. He currently he lives in Lovell.

Wilson was drawn to the piano so early in his life that he can’t remember when he did not play. By 11n, under the guidance of a instructor, he was composing pieces in the styles of such classical masters as Bach, Mozart, and Debussy. “It was a good way to launch musical thinking,” he muses.

By high school he was well on his way to a jazz/folk career, and so successful that he not only won prestigious awards (including Downbeat Magazine’s “Best High School Jazz Soloist” three years in a row), but was composing pieces that still feature in his repertoire. We will probably hear one of those, “Gladstone” (named after Gladstone, Ore, his birthplace), at the Brick Church.

“I used to wait for lightning to strike – for inspiration to happen – when I was composing,” Wilson said, “but that happened more often back when I wasn’t so busy with work and family.” Now he starts his compositions in a new way, away from the piano, jotting down “pitch relationships that seem interesting, provocative, not necessarily melodic, with no rhythm or pre-selected harmonies.” Later in the process he goes to the piano and plays with his sets of pitches until fuller ideas begin to arrive. “It’s like writing words on separate slips of paper without any idea how they might be shaped into a narrative,” he explains. “You can start anywhere; you find nooks and crannies you might not have found otherwise.”

But writing, for Wilson, has always taken a back seat to his delight in performing. “It’s risky to do something creative in front of people – it’s like a tightrope walk and a profoundly social act at the same time!” The audience is essential, and the performance is always an improvisation on the melodic idea, different every time. “We’re co-creating music from the chemistry in the room.” The musicians’ job is “to extrapolate and take the story further.”

The Brick Church is located on Christian Hill Road (just off Route 5) in Lovell.  FMI:  go to www.lovellbrickchurch.org or call 207-925-1500.