Iva Bittová's latest release, Elida, recorded with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, simulates the packaging of her grandmother's favorite luxury soap. After opening the ocean-blue wrapping circled with delicate gold-lace patterns and lettering, you find a spiral folded wax-paper wrapper containing lyrics and liner notes.

"With a look and scent that is pure through and through / No one equals your smoothness / Made out of bones and perfume / The purest one" reads the poem by Vera Chase that is the other central inspiration for the CD.

How did a bar of soap and the 21st-century bilingual (Czech and English) poetry of Vera Chase combine to create a musical work worthy of Carnegie Hall, where Bittová performed with the All-Stars in April?

"Elida seemed to me to be full of multiple meanings, something that could be played with — in music, in expression, in the way of creating the CD cover and the booklet," she says. "I discovered the poem coincidentally at home, and immediately it became my musical motif for composing for Bang on a Can last summer."

To succeed in the challenges of composing Elida, which Bittová describes as "a certain freedom in searching," and working with "musicians who were open to improvisation," she could hardly have landed with a better crew than the All-Stars. A collective of some of the best musicians who have performed over the years at the New York Bang on a Can contemporary music festival, the group and its performances were perhaps best described by The Wall Street Journal's Greg Sandow, who wrote, "If all contemporary classical music concerts were like this, there wouldn't be a problem with contemporary classical music."

The All-Stars use not only classical ensemble instruments such as clarinets and cello but add bass, drums and guitar. No strangers to Prague, they played a well-received performance at Archa Theater in 1999 of Brian Eno's "Music for Airports," along with several compositions by collective members. The group's previous projects include performances of works by 20th-century pioneers such as Harry Partch and Morton Feldman, and contemporary composers like Phillip Glass and Terry Riley.

For all that, their work with Bittová has been one of their more adventurous outings. She describes it as finding "a new musical language and expression," while the All-Stars enthused that their April concert with her at Carnegie Hall was "one of our greatest life experiences."

It's difficult to categorize Bittová's talent. There are many vocalists working with "extended voice" singing that reaches beyond and between the notes naturally noted for the piano keyboard. Compared to Björk and Meredith Monk, to name two, Bittová, who grew up in rural Moravia, took folk music to heart in childhood. Unlike Diamana Galas, who confronts audiences with density of catharsis and pathos, Bittová tends more toward playfulness. It is perhaps Norwegian/Sami singer Marie Boine, whose childhood gave her a day-to-day exposure to folk music, who comes closest to matching Bittová.

Bittová's work, unlike Boine's, is not as solidly based on folk or even world-music stylings. In works such as Elida, she at times approaches a seamless bridging of the tonalities between modern classical and ancient folk music. At moments like these, the results are more like that of the late Armenian-American singer Cathey Berberian in her seminal work with Luciano Berio entitled "Folk Songs."