There will be no conductor, no huge ensemble, none of the usual trappings of classical music.

Instead, there will be six players and a goal to bring chamber music to the Lincoln arts community.

For seven years the Third Chair Chamber Players have opened each season with this goal and let a particular theme for that year guide them.

“We decided to form the group and offer to Lincoln chamber music,” said Becky Van de Bogart, artistic director and flutist for the group.

Friday, 8 p.m., at The Loft at The Mill, they will open their season and show their souls, which is their guiding theme for this season.

Of their rotating cast of 22 musicians, only seven will perform for the “Collective Soul” show.

This small assortment of players is part of the aesthetic of chamber music.

Van de Bogart said the average chamber ensemble involves more than three but no more than 13 people performing at one time.

With no conductor leading the group, the musicians rely on each other, piecing together each section of music, each part needing to fall into place to pull the performance off.

Van de Bogart said this adds to the appeal of chamber music.

“The musicians have more ownership of the final product,” she said.

For Sheri Ericksen, keyboardist for the group, the way to pull this off is to let her keyboarding serve as a base for the music.

“The keyboard is kind of an anchor for the group,” Ericksen said.

But even with this anchor, each part of the whole must fill in its part to achieve the scheme of the music.

“I have to be very steady, very conservative, and at some point, each person has to be a leader within the group,” she said.

It isn’t just the execution of the music that matters – it’s also the selection of the pieces that brings everything full circle.

The selections for this season all bring it back to the central theme of the soul.

And with this theme, Ericksen not only acts as an anchor to the group with her playing, but also tries to channel a sense of soul into the music.

“The music that was chosen shows a lot of emotion,” Ericksen said, adding that it became her and the rest of the ensemble’s job to convey this effectively.

And when the job is done right?

“That, for me, is part of the soul of the music,” she said.

However, if the group did not work well together, the soul and emotion of the music would never have the same effect as it potentially could on the audience.

Luckily, this is not the case for the Third Chair Chamber Players.

“We’re a pretty tight bunch of people,” Van de Bogart said.