It always seems hard to know what to expect when Kathryn Claire comes to Bend.

The Portland-based singer-songwriter, guitarist and violinist has long been an in-demand collaborator with bands in Oregon and beyond, and she’s brought many of her projects to McMenamins Old St. Francis School over the years. Last year, she performed twice at the venue — first with new project The Lasses, an Amsterdam-based traditional folk duo, and then later with fellow Portland songwriter Ashleigh Flynn and her band The Riveters. Her earliest performances in the city were with flutist and former Portlander Hanz Araki.

That’s not mentioning her solo performances, or the different permutations of her band, usually anchored by bassist Allen Hunter. She’ll return to McMenamins on Thursday with a group featuring Hunter, pianist/percussionist Don Henson and second violinist Sid Ditson.

“The new album (‘Bones Will Last’) has a lot of two-part violin parts on it — I’m a violinist, and I composed a lot of the album with two violins, but I don’t always get to play it with two violins live,” she said from home. “So I was so excited to have Sid on this upcoming run of shows, just because every time I get to play this stuff live with two violins, it’s pretty magical.”

Claire also said she’s happy to be closer to home after recent tours of Japan with The Lasses and the Netherlands with Hunter. She’s been a frequent visitor to both countries over the years, and has ties to each: She spent her high-school years attending an American school in Japan while her father taught Japanese, and she has family in Amsterdam.

The connections have led to international collaborations. Along with The Lasses, Claire works with Japan-based band Big Bridges, co-fronting the group with Japanese guitarist Takashi O’hashi.

“I do feel like I have been influenced by that,” Claire said. “I’ve always been interested in folk music, and also exposed to a lot of classical music since I was a kid, and so I think all of that comes through both the classical and the folk music (that I play). In my adult life, I’ve ended up playing a lot of folk fiddle tunes when I have traveled and just sessions and jamming with people and stuff. A lot of that violin music, you do get that Eastern European and the Irish. All of that stuff, there’s just this sort of language of fiddle music that you start to hear a lot of these threads through that music.”

Claire’s Dutch grandfather inspired her to pick up violin at 7 (she still plays on his instrument). She studied classical music until “about the middle of high school,” when she switched to guitar. During her first year of college at Boston University, she began jamming with a group of students in her dorm, and soon, the violin came back out.

“When I stopped playing when I was 15 or 16, it was like, ah, I don’t want to do this anymore. I had other interests,” Claire said. “And at the same time, when I came back to it, I had this whole wealth of musical understanding — I can read music. I studied Suzuki violin method, which is really based in playing by ear, and so having the classical background totally developed my ear and my intonation.”

Classical music was a key component to last year’s “Bones Will Last,” the follow-up to Claire’s 2014 covers set “Shimmering Blue.” Half of the record’s 10 songs are instrumental, with Claire layering multiple violin parts to create an orchestral folk feel. The writing sessions yielded another batch of more rocking, electric guitar-based songs that Claire plans to record with her band in August.

“Originally I was like, maybe I’m gonna make an instrumental album, and then I’m gonna make this other album of all songs,” Claire said. “But then I started to just feel like … these songs all kind of split. Some of them were clearly — I was writing them on the electric guitar, they were more rock-based, I guess. And then there was this handful of songs that were so tender — the lyrical songs on ‘Bones Will Last’ are very tender. I wanted to keep them really sparse. I didn’t want a kit drummer on them. I wanted the whole album to be really sweet.”