Wind instruments will reign as the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society presents its annual spring concert on Sunday, May 25, at 4 p.m. at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center.

Everybody growing up in the small town of Kingman, 
Kans., took piano lessons, Delores (Dee) Stevens, 83, explained, sitting at the table of her Chilmark home on a sunny summer morning. That was just what you did. “I was so excited when I had my first lesson. I think I was about four,” Mrs. Stevens said.

The Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society joins thousands of musicians and hundreds of concert presenters across the country for National Chamber Music Month. For information on chamber music performances taking place across the country during the month, visit chamber-music.org.

Closer to home, the MVCMS will perform their annual spring concert on Sunday, May 26 at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown beginning at 4 p.m. and will feature musicians from the Boston Symphony Orchestra performing the music of Beethoven, Franck and Piazzolla.

If you need an extra incentive to attend the Chamber Music Society’s first concert of the summer this week, here’s one: It’s free. The tickets have all been pre-paid by Sam Feldman, whose late wife Gretchen was an avid supporter of chamber music.

“I’m trying to help her legacy in continuing the [Chamber Music Society] and making it healthy and strong,” Mr. Feldman said. “We are both very involved in our community and love to give back to this wonderful place.”

No accounting for taste. More accurately, those who love classical music enjoy such a variety of musical tastes, that only in the hands of an elite concert group will all be satisfied.

So it was last Saturday at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown, when the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society kicked off its pre-summer spring concert with a specially curated piano quartet.

Recently the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society chose singer Emily Lowe as the recipient of its annual Caroline Worthington Scholarship. Emily graduated from the regional high school this past June and is the daughter of Cheryl and Erik Lowe of West Tisbury, and the granddaughter of Ernest Mendenhall and Kathy Logue.

By NICK MOORHEAD

Originally designed to be accommodated in a palace chamber, music under the heading of chamber music has over the years moved out of the palaces and into the hearts and minds of the masses. Well, masses may be a slight exaggeration when comparing chamber music lovers to the throngs flocking to Lady Gaga. But gather all the fans and all the audiences of the past few hundred years or so and this specialized art form rises to the top of the music charts.

David Rhoderick, president of the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society, has announced the appointment of Jane Coakley as its new executive director. Ms. Coakley succeeds Rise Terney, who held the position from 2009 to April 2011.

The Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society concludes its 39th summer season with a pair of concerts on Monday, August 17, at the Old Whaling Church, and Tuesday, August 18, at the Chilmark Community Center, featuring violinist Roger Wilkie, cellist Antonio Lysy and pianist Delores Stevens, artistic director of the music society.