To the many honors that the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra can claim, here's one more to add: if it wasn't for WYSO, singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens' acclaimed 2005 "Illinois" album wouldn't have sounded quite the same.

That's because Madison native Marla Hansen played the viola on some of the album's gorgeous string arrangements, such as the hit song "Chicago." And Hansen said that if it hadn't been for WYSO, she might have quit the viola altogether.

Hansen started playing the piano at 7, and the viola at the age of 9. At first, like many kids, she was excited to play music, but as she became a teenager, it was WYSO that kept her motivated.

"I find this now that when I teach to a lot of kids and they get to high school, sometimes it's hard to keep motivated on an instrument, especially when you want to be social," she said. "To have a youth orchestra, especially one that was so inspiring, I took it so seriously.

"There were so many great kids in there, and the conductors were awesome. I'm sure I would have quit otherwise. I quit piano, but I didn't quit viola basically because I liked playing in WYSO. And then after I got over my adolescent angst, I realized that I really loved music and wanted to go to music school."

Since graduating from West High School and the UW-Madison, Hansen has had an extremely busy and fruitful career, both on her own as a singer-songwriter (she released the EP "Wedding Day" in 2007) and as a violist collaborating with others.

She moved to Brooklyn after college and met Shara Worden of the band My Brightest Diamond through a mutual friend, someone she knew through "quartet" camp in Vermont. ("You don't want to know what happens at quartet camp," Hansen joked.)

From there, Hansen has played with Worden, Stevens, Jens Lekman, Kanye West and a host of others. The last time she performed in Madison, at an October 2008 Orpheum Stage Door show, she performed triple duty: She took part in a bewitching and very theatrical set with Worden's My Brightest Diamond, performed with the middle act, Clare and the Reasons, and did a short opening set of her own.

"It was just such a gorgeous thing to be a part of," Hansen said of that tour. "The puppets, the costumes, the whole thing. Shara is just so great at creating a really nice cohesive event with her songs. It was magical almost every night."

Hansen used to visit Madison quite a bit when she lived in New York City, but after moving overseas to Berlin this year, she doesn't get back nearly as much. So she said she's thrilled to be coming back with the string quartet Osso to the Project Lodge on Friday, Oct. 30.

Osso's show will draw from two projects, both of which are tangentially related to Sufjan Stevens. The first Stevens-related project is "The BQE," a 2007 short film that Stevens was commissioned to write a live soundtrack for by the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Osso was part of that group and will perform the music, and the film will be screened separately.

The other project is Osso's first album, "Run Rabbit Run," a track-by-track reworking of a 2001 solo electronica album by Stevens called "Enjoy Your Rabbit." The project began when a friend of the group's was commissioned to do string arrangements for a Cincinnati music festival, and the experience went so well that the group decided to do a full album.

"It was so much fun and so well received that we all decided that we should do a whole record," Hansen said.

She said it may sound strange to turn a solo electronica project into a classical piece for four musicians, but the group realized right away that the core of the album gave them a lot to work with.

"It was super-exciting, especially when we played the first four ones," she said. "When you get a good piece of music, you can really feel it. This was so much better than we even thought it would be. There was something really natural about doing this."

IF YOU GO

Who: Osso, w/ DM Stith

When: Friday, Oct. 30, 7:30 p.m.

Where: Project Lodge, 817 E. Johnson St.

Admission: $8

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