Are you in heaven? Well, you're probably in one of the closest places you can be to it. You are attending a concert at the Blair Hill Inn, a magnificent hillside estate built in the 1890s.

It all started when owners Dan and Ruth McLaughlin noticed a for performance by a string quartet concert up for auction on Maine's PBS annual fund-raiser. They placed a bid and were thrilled to be the winning bidder. They decided to present the Dapont String Quartet at the inn and invite friends and townspeople for an informal concert.

It was a tremendous success and the McLaughlins remember thinking, "We've got something special here." When she planned the concert series for 2001, things dovetailed together nicely: "I feel that this is meant to be," Ruth said. "Everything has fallen into place and has been overwhelmingly received." Maine virtuoso pianist, Anastasia Antonacos was the first to be in the series and Tom Snow, a jazz pianist with Gerhard Graml on bass became the second concert that Ruth McLaughlin had arranged.

During this process the McLaughlins talked with Susan Crippen, executive director of North Country Healthy Communities and a member of the Arcady Board of Directors, about their plans. The Arcady Music Festival has been presenting classical music to the people of Maine for 21 years. Crippen suggested that the inn would be an ideal place to showcase concerts from the Arcady summer series. The idea was well received by the Arcady board; and for the first time, Dover-Foxcroft shared two of its six summer concerts with Greenville in what could be termed a pilot project. The first Arcady performance was Trio Voronezh, a Russian folk group, who performed on the lawn backlit first by a spectacular sunset and then a canopy of stars over Moosehead Lake.

Audiences were enraptured by the beautiful music complementing the magnificent view from Blair Hill. The most recent performance was called East Meets West and featured members of the New York Philharmonic and a Chinese ensemble playing traditional Asian instruments.

It was an extraordinary musical evening with a crowd of approximately 150 people filling the carriage barn and spilling into the parking lot.

Even the rain that intermittently threatened to spoil the evening wasn't a problem. Concert-goers were very enthusiastic. Anna Cauldwell from the Bangor area said she thought the Blair Hill Inn was the most beautiful location for a concert she had ever seen.

Twelve-year-old Rory McAvoy said it was "very cool" although he had a little trouble following along with some of the Chinese traditional pieces. "I liked it," he said. "It sure was different!" Jonathan Smythe, a wildlife photographer from England summed it up nicely: "Where else on earth could I be mucking about with the moose in the morning and then listen to marvelous classical music in a beautiful setting that very same evening!"

The money raised from these concerts goes either to the musicians or to fund future programs. Music on Blair Hill will conclude the summer series with a special concert by David Mallett on Saturday, Sept. 8th. The concert is sponsored by the Moosehead Cultural Council, an informal network of Moosehead area arts and heritage-based organizations as well as those individuals that have an interest in locally promoting artistic, cultural and community events. For more information or to reserve a seat for this event, please call 695-0224.