GREENVILLE – There is beauty in the hills of the Moosehead Lake region and now there is music to accompany that beauty.

The sounds of jazz, Russian folk and chamber music will flow from the Blair Hill Inn, a magnificent estate that was built on a 20-foot-high stone wall overlooking Moosehead Lake in the late 1800s.

“Music on Blair Hill,” a series of five concert performances, will be offered by the inn’s owners, Dan and Ruth McLaughlin, starting Saturday, June 2, with an evening of concert piano with Anastasia Antonacos and soloist Laura Harris, and ending Saturday, Sept. 8, with a performance by Maine folk singer David Mallett.

The McLaughlins, who moved from Chicago to Greenville during a blizzard in 1997, first opened their home to the public for a concert a few months after their arrival. The performers, the Dapont String Quartet, had offered a concert as an auction item for the Maine Public Broadcasting System and the McLaughlins were the successful bidders.

“We felt that a chamber concert would be a wonderful way to thank the many people who had helped us feel so welcome in our new home,” Ruth McLaughlin said.

That thank you extended many ways, according to Ruth McLaughlin. She recalled the day the moving van got stuck on the steep incline to the inn during a blizzard and the good Samaritans who stopped to help. And of the service extended by local businesses, including deliveries to their door, something they were unaccustomed to.

Among the 40 people in the audience at that first concert were employees of the local hardware store, the grocery store, other inns and teachers, who had extended kindness to the couple’s children.

“The 1891 hillside estate proved to be the perfect venue with its high ceilings, grand spaces and nearly floor to ceiling windows,” McLaughlin said. “With stringed instruments reaching a crescendo just as the sun broke from behind a cloud across the lake, the marriage of music and nature was awe inspiring,” she remarked.

Because the first performance was so well received and because they wanted to continue to promote the arts in the region, the couple engaged Antonacos, Harris and jazz pianist Tom Snow for performances in 2001.

But it wasn’t long after those concerts were booked that the McLaughlins linked up with Susan Crippen, project director of North Country Healthy Communities. Crippen, who promotes the arts for the Moosehead Cultural Collaborative, an informal network of Moosehead area arts and heritage-based organizations and supporters, had received grant funds from the Maine Arts Commission’s Artists in Communities for local performances.

Having been successful in convincing Arcady to hold two of its six local concert series in Greenville and having lined up a performance by Mallett, Crippen was looking for a host site and the inn appeared to be a natural fit. Thus, the three-concert series was expanded to five.

Tickets for the concert are $15 each and the proceeds from certain performances will go to the performers, such as the Arcady society.

Two of the concerts – Russian folk music on July 31 and jazz piano with Tom Snow on July 3 – will be outdoors, weather permitting. Participants should bring folding chairs and-or blankets for these two events. In case of inclement weather, these two concerts will be held in the large barn which can seat 150 people. Chairs will be provided.

The remaining concerts will be held in the historic inn. Advance reservations are requested for the concerts.

“It seems like a win-win situation for us and the community,” Ruth McLaughlin said. “It gets people thinking of the area as something other than just a place to hunt and fish and they’ll see there are real exciting things happening in Greenville.”