On a warm evening in July, nine musicians gather at the home of Grace Phelan and David Harris.

They congregate in the music room, a bright, welcoming space with large windows that overlook Bellingham Bay. After some light chitchat, they carefully remove instruments from their cases and tune them to the right key.

One holds a guitar in his hands; another, a mandolin; a third plays the banjo. Spontaneously, without announcement, they begin to play.

The musicians range in age from 25 to 71, but age, gender and professional status disappear as they begin to play. The song that emerges is joyful, full of rhythm, celebration and harmony.

There's not a page of sheet music in sight, yet somehow everyone seems to know what to do, how to make their instrument sing to the overall tune and create a sound that's pure happiness.

The melody is "Bound to Have a Little Fun," a piece of oldtime Southern Appalachian music reminiscent of songs played for square dances. It's foot-tapping stuff, to be sure, the kind of tune you feel yourself relaxing into as the worries of the day slip quietly out the door.

The tune, and the many that follow it over the next couple of hours, sings of history, timelessness and the joy of making music together. There's nothing old-fashioned about it.

Phelan catches Harris' eye and flashes a smile. The two are exuberant when they're in the company of other musicians, jamming in their favorite style of music. It's why they created the music room when they remodeled their South Hill home in 2001.

"We're totally amateur musicians," Harris confesses later. "I've never had any formal musical training, and it shows!

"But we've been gathering monthly with friends and other musicians informally, purely for our own entertainment, for the past 10 years. We call it the Bellingham Jam."

Between the two of them, Phelan and Harris play the fiddle, guitar, banjo and mandolin. They love their monthly music jams, and never know how many players will show up to celebrate their fondness for Southern Appalachian music. Sometimes there are as few as two; other times up to 14 arrive. The Steinway piano sits silent while string instruments take the lead.

As the Cascade Mountains glow in a spectacular sunset, the room is enlivened by music that set its roots hundreds of years ago, carrying in its melody the ghosts of ancestral influences, as well as their stories, their heartache and their celebrations.

DIGITAL MUSIC

A few blocks away in historic Fairhaven, Ken Harrison is making music of a different sort in his music room. The only instrument in sight is a keyboard; other than that, his studio is dominated by computer screens and a series of sound modules that contain digitized libraries of sound.

"I don't use them much anymore but I'm sentimental about them," he admits. "I used them throughout my career and I can't let them go."

Harrison, 59, was once a major composer of music for television and Hollywood films. You'd know his compositions from such shows as "MacGyver," "Melrose Place" and "Dallas."

But Los Angeles offered a lifestyle that lost its appeal by 1992, and Harrison moved his family to Bellingham for a better quality of life. He gestures to an image of wildflowers on his monitor, taken not long ago at Artist Point. "This is an hour from my home, and I just love it," he says.

Though Harrison has turned his professional attention to realty, his music room remains a well-used space where you'll find him composing symphonies for Whatcom Symphony Orchestra and songs for his son Kaleb, 12, and his wife, Kathy.

"My wife used to sing in nightclubs in Los Angeles," he says with pride. "Now she sings in the shower." Kaleb plays piano in a jazz band and performs in a rock 'n' roll band, too.

Harrison has no regrets about leaving a full-time career as a composer. The transition happened in 1998, during a difficult time for the family, when their daughter, Ally, was diagnosed with cancer.

"I took two years off when she became ill, and over that time we just tried to get through, day by day," he reflects.

Ally died in 2000, and when Harrison turned his attention back to the music business, he found it had changed.

"They wanted to own the copyright to my music," he says, still stunned by the audacity of Hollywood. "I took my 23-year career of writing and composing music and felt fortunate to have had that long a run at it."

Every few years, Whatcom County music lovers are treated to a feast of Harrison's compositions when he conducts his work for the Whatcom Symphony. It's an opportunity he jumps at, a chance to flex his creative muscles and return - albeit briefly - to his passion for making music. At the thought, his eyes light up with enthusiasm.

"There's no bigger thrill for me," he says slowly, "than to stand in front of 80 fine musicians and conduct my own symphony."