Carla Kihlstedt and Mark Orton, founding members of the irresistibly subversive ensemble, Tin Hat Trio, return with their new musical projects, promising an evening spent exploring some of the more compelling outer reaches of experimental chamber music.

Carla Kihlstedt, Marika Hughes, and Shazad Ismaily make up 2 Foot Yard, a trio dedicated to exploring the boundaries between art song and pop song. Alternately evoking the intimacy and warmth of chamber music and the visceral expression of rock, the trio straddles the classical and everyday worlds with a sound that melds musical virtuosity, folk soul, and pop imagination. 2FY is as likely to set an e e cummings poem in the context of a pop song as they are to surround narratives with avant-garde compositions, or rub faux folk songs against the real thing until sparks fly. An invigorating, adventurous composer, vocalist, and violin virtuoso, and a founding member of both Tin Hat Trio and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Carla writes most of 2FY's material. She's joined in the group by cellist/vocalist Marika, also known for her playing with Red Pocket and singing with Charming Hostess, and widely traveled multi-instrumentalist Shahzad on percussion. The trio recently released an eponymously named album on John Zorn's Tzadik label.

The latest vehicle for Mark Orton's striking compositions, Aurora Septet features some of the most intriguing musicians of the Bay Area and beyond, interpreting Mark's subversive, free-wheeling chamber music with technical proficiency and an avant-garde penchant for exploration. Familiar to fans of Tin Hat Trio, Mark's genre-defying pieces blend elements of tango, bluegrass, contemporary classical, and American and Eastern European folk traditions (plus much much more) into an evocative hybrid that the New Yorker magazine once described as "Haunting and strangely familiar music . . . a soundtrack for the kind of puzzling dream which leaves you sitting awake in the middle of the night." Mark, on guitar and dobro, is joined in the septet by Carla Kihlstedt (2 Foot Yard) on violin, Dina Macabee on viola, cellist Marika Hughes (2 Foot Yard), and no less than three clarinetists: Ben Goldberg (Junk Genius, New Klezmer Trio), Beth Custer (Club Foot Orchestra, Trance Mission, Do�a Luz 30 Besos), and Cornelius Boots.