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Schoenberg Hall to host Sequenza members Colin Carr, Mark Kaplan and Yael Weiss tonight.

The trio Sequenza, comprised of violinist Mark Kaplan, cellist Colin Carr and pianist Yael Weiss, aren’t subject to the typical boundaries of chamber music. In some parts of tonight’s performance, Yael Weiss, Sequenza’s pianist, will approach her instrument in a rather unconventional way.

“Bright Sheng’s (piece) requires me to play inside the piano – to actually play on the strings,” Weiss said. “It’s something you’re never going to find in music written before 1950.”

At 8 p.m. tonight in Schoenberg Hall, Sequenza will perform a program of two parts. The first section features chamber music by the German composers Franz Joseph Haydn and Johannes Brahms. The second part of the program showcases music by the Chinese-American composer Bright Sheng and French composer Maurice Ravel’s China-inspired “Trio in A Minor.”

The dual cultural nature of the program is a conscious choice on the part of Kaplan, Carr and Weiss, who thought it would be interesting to bring European and Chinese classical music together in one program.

A highlight of the performance will be the music composed by Sheng, an innovative composer known for his ability to traverse conventional boundaries of classical music, according to the trio.

“He uses traditional western instruments like the violin, cello and piano to achieve sonorities which are very similar to those that one would achieve with traditional Chinese instruments,” Kaplan said. “It’s an amazing compositional feat.”

Sequenza will perform Sheng’s “Four Movements for Piano Trio.” The piece moves from a Chinese folk style to a wild dance, finally ending in a calm, nostalgic tone.

Sheng’s talent in creating Eastern classical music with Western instruments does not fail to impress cellist and former UCLA music professor Colin Carr.

“It’s really remarkable; it’s unlike anything we’ve ever played,” he said. “It’s like being dropped into rural China.”

Sheng’s trio will be followed by Ravel’s “Trio in A Minor.” Despite the fact that Ravel had limited knowledge of Chinese music, the members of Sequenza opted to perform his trio because of the French composer’s fascination with music from the Far East.

“What Ravel was doing was based more on a few bits of information supplemented by a lot of imagination,” Kaplan said. “Bright Sheng’s music is based on a very thorough knowledge of Chinese music, but the two are closely related in intent.”

As a music professor at UCLA, Kaplan hopes that Sheng’s pieces will pique interest among the large Asian population he observes in his classes and on campus.

Sequenza, which means “following” in Italian, is a new ensemble formed out of the Golub-Kaplan-Carr Trio, one of the foremost trios of its kind for 18 years. After the unexpected death of pianist David Golub, Kaplan and Carr searched for another member who would fit well into the dynamic of the trio and found Weiss, a young Israeli pianist.

Though they are technically a trio, the members of Sequenza aren’t limited to pieces written exclusively for trios. In a recent performance at Princeton University, Sequenza performed all Brahms works. They selected many pieces that were not trios and thus were able to show their musical flexibility by breaking up into pairs and also by performing solos. They also perform with guest artists and sometimes expand into larger groups.

“This is the sort of thing we’d like to do more of,” Carr said. “We like to do things that other trios don’t do because we are all soloists and we can mix and match like that. It’s fun to do.”

Sequenza performs tonight at 8 p.m. at Schoenberg Hall. Tickets are $30, $15 for students. For more information, call the CTO at (310) 825-2102.