It took a continent to bring together the Turtle Island Quartet and Nellie McKay.

The avant-garde chamber group and the indescribable singer-songwriter bring it all back home in their Lehigh Valley debut, with "A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing," performing the music of Billy Strayhorn, Billie Holiday and the Weimar cabaret era, 3 p.m. Sept. 28, Miller Symphony Hall, Allentown.

McKay, a resident of the Pocono Mountains, and Turtle Island Quartet, based in the San Francisco Bay area, got together about two years ago after quartet co-founder, David Balakrishnan, violin, saw McKay in concert.

Recalls Turtle Island Quartet co-founder Mark Summer, cello, in a phone interview of McKay's concert at Villa Montalvo, Los Gatos, Calif., "The power went off and she [McKay] just kept playing at the piano and he [Balakrishnan] was enchanted with that."

The Turtle Island Quartet (which includes Mateusz Smoczynski, violin, and Benjamin Von Gutzeit, viola) and McKay, who plays piano, ukulele and marimba, have enchanted each other, audiences and critics, ever since.

Expect the Turtle Island Quartet to open the concert with several selections, with McKay next playing solo selections and then the musicians joining forces for an approximate two-hour concert, with intermission.

Look, and listen, for Billie Holiday favorites ("These Foolish Things," "The Very Thought of You") Marlene Dietrich classics ("Ich Bin Die Feshce Lola," "Black Market," "Alabama Song," the latter famously recorded by The Doors, Doris Day songs (from McKay's Doris Day tribute album, "Normal as Blueberry Pie") and Turtle Island and McKay originals ("Beneath the Underdog").

"Nellie's kind of in her own category," enthuses Summer. "She can do her own cabaret singing, you know, channeling Marlene Dietrich, but then also present [her own] satirical comedy songs, like 'Feminists Don't Have A Sense of Humor.'

"She's just a singular talent in the sense that she's writing her own songs. So, there's really nobody to compare her with. She's in her own world and own category."

The Turtle Island Quartet can also claim category singularity. The group's latest, "Confetti Man," set for release next month, includes McKay on an arrangement she did with Balakrishnan of "Send Me No Flowers" by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

Of the Turtle Island-McKay collaboration, Summer says, "I think it's unusual in that her style is markedly different from some of the other people we work with."

The two-time Grammy-winning quartet, approaching its 30th anniversary, has collaborated with Paquito d'Rivera, Cyrus Chestnut and Leo Kottke. The quartet has devoted entire concerts to the music of John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix.

The Turtle Island Quartet takes its name from "Turtle Island," a 1974 book of Pulitzer Prize-winning poems and essays by San Francisco Beat Generation poet Gary Snyder.

Northeastern Woodland indigenous tribes described North America as Turtle Island. The Lenape story of the Great Turtle was first recorded 1678-'80.

Says Summer of the quartet's name, "It was a way of talking about the group being an American group and playing American music. But, of course, this music has come from all over.

"We wanted to give some indication that this wasn't a classical group.

"Some of it was in a reaction to what the Kronos Quartet was doing," Summer continues. "There was a really strong feeling from David [Balakrishnan] that we could do this as a self-contained unit with techniques that we invented or developed further to imitate the sounds of instruments found in a jazz combo, drums, bass, piano, as well as improvising over chord changes, like saxophone or trumpet.

"There's a technique called the chop. It can be played on the viola, violin or cello. It imitates the sound of the drum. You can accompany the soloist and also have some chordal notes.

"Putting it all together creates a groove," Summer says.

Expect McKay to jump head first into the groove during the Miller Symphony Hall concert.

When asked if there's a setlist for the Turtle Island-McKay concert, McKay, in a separate phone interview, ever the quipster, says, "They think so," referring to her quartet cohorts.

Of the collaboration, McKay notes, "We all did the charts together. It was warm and fuzzy.

"They sent me some charts. We camped out in Florida for a day and we went through everything and we were off."

McKay has familiarity with Weimar cabaret material. She debuted on Broadway in 2006 in "The Threepenny Opera," receiving a Theatre World Award for her portrayal of Polly Peachum.

McKay's releases include her double-album debut, "Get Away From Me" (2003), "Pretty Little Head" (2006), "Obligatory Villagers" (2007), "Normal as Blueberry Pie: A Tribute to Doris Day" (2009) and "Home Sweet Mobile Home" (2010).

The Turtle Island Quartet and McKay have crisscrossed the back of Turtle Island: California, Washington, Mississippi, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania.

Of why she enjoys touring with Turtle Island, McKay jokes, "They have good taste in food and they're good drivers."

Concert tickets: Miller Symphony Hall Box Office, 23 N. Sixth St., Allentown; allentownsymphony.org; 610-432-6715