Jazz innovator Charlie Parker loved Igor Stravinsky’s music and avant-classical figurehead Gyí¶rgy Ligeti made a close study of Thelonious Monk, so it’s no surprise that the worlds of composition and improvisation have been growing ever closer. In fact, they’re now almost indistinguishable—as can be seen from the three concerts that Montreal’s Quatuor Bozzini will play in Vancouver over the next two months.

At 2:30 p.m. on Saturday (February 27), the acclaimed string quartet plays Performance Works as part of the free Winterruption festival. While this event is curated by the Coastal Jazz & Blues Society, the group’s program includes works by academically trained composers James Tenney and Jo Kondo, as well as one by the genre-defying violinist Malcolm Goldstein. Just two hours later, the Bozzinis will return to the Performance Works stage in clarinetist Franí§ois Houle’s La Valse d’Angí¨le/Because She Hoped: French-Canadian Folk Tales, which adds traditional Québécois fiddling to the mix. And then on April 8, Quatuor Bozzini will once again head west, this time for a Scotiabank Dance Centre concert sponsored by Vancouver New Music, and featuring a lengthy commission, Les petites portes, from improvising guitarist Bernard Falaise.

Clearly, this is a group that knows no boundaries, as first violinist Clemens Merkel explains from his Montreal office. “On the one side we are a traditional string quartet, but on the other side we are very actively involved in the Montreal music scene, including the musique actuelle scene—improvisation,” he says. “And this certainly gives a specific spice to our quartet.”

Although Merkel, second violinist Nadia Francavilla, violist Stéphanie Bozzini, and cellist Isabelle Bozzini don’t have anything against more conventional forms of music—Merkel, for instance, is widely recognized as a skilled interpreter of Johann Sebastian Bach—they find their greatest satisfaction in playing scores that incorporate both adventurous writing and an anarchic spirit of play. Increasingly, their material is coming from the members of Montreal’s fertile musical underground, which embraces everyone from jazz-sax veteran Jean Derome to avant-rock bands like Miriodor and A Silver Mt. Zion.

“I find their compositional approach very fresh—much more, somehow, than what’s often coming out of universities, where there’s too much school involved,” Merkel says. “They have an approach to composition which embraces all their experiences from improvisation. And they didn’t start as composers right away. It’s all people who have been playing for a long time, and then they kind of slowly go into composition.”

One shared quality, he adds, is that these musicians are not afraid to experiment. Falaise’s Les petites portes takes its inspiration from the advent calendar and offers “little doors” into 24 different sonic worlds—some scored, some featuring structured improvisation, and some incorporating recordings of Montreal’s urban environment.

“Every piece is a little different,” Merkel says. “And that is also the case with Malcolm Goldstein’s piece [A New Song of Many Faces for in These Times]. Part of it is open, and other parts are very, very detailed.”

Other connections will be made, especially when the Bozzini Quartet plays the Goldstein and Tenney pieces on February 27. Tenney’s Koan for String Quartet, for instance, is an adaptation of the earlier Koan for Solo Violin, which Goldstein premiered in 1971.

“Koan for String Quartet uses the solo violin part and basically harmonizes it,” Merkel explains. “It becomes a very different piece, of course—and a very successful piece, I have to say.”