Many performing organizations are obsessed with finding new ways to present classical music in order to tap younger audiences. Few, however, have gone to the lengths of the cellist Matt Haimovitz, who has taken to performing on the club circuit. His current venue is the Knitting Factory, where on Sunday evening he and an assortment of colleagues made the first of three weekly appearances under the rubric “Goulash.”

This is an inelegant but informative description of what was involved – a mix of East and West, classical and popular, all spiked with a strong dose of Hungarian flavor. The starting point, as Mr. Haimovitz explained in brief remarks, was Bela Bartok’s study of the folk music of his native Transylvania, in which he identified Oriental elements that he speculated might have originated in Turkey. Accordingly, the Hungarian composer visited Turkey in 1936 to record and transcribe a number of songs.

This scholarly premise served as a point of departure for a fanciful, 100-minute span of continuous music, in which set pieces succeeded each other either without a break or were interspersed with stretches of improvisations. Mr. Haimovitz’s imaginative, mood-creating packaging of free-flowing music set this apart from the traditional classical concert experience, as did the darkened, cramped atmosphere of the Knitting Factory’s tap bar, where you can sit at a small table and sip a drink.

The performing forces exemplified the East-West juxtaposition. Joining Mr. Haimovitz in an ensemble called Uccello are three other cellists, rotating assignments generally taken by his students at McGill University; on this occasion they were David Eggert, Judith Manger, and Sung-Pyung Chu. Also participating were two members of a group called Constantinople, which specializes in Middle Eastern music: Ziya Tabastan, who played a variety of Persian percussion instruments, and the setar player Kiya Tabbasian.

First on the program came an arrangement – really more of an extended elaboration – by Mr. Haimovitz of two folk songs that Bartok collected in Turkey. The piece started with plaintive, intertwined lines from the cellos, then moved on to bustling, highly rhythmic music of the sort that conjures up images of Middle Eastern bazaars. DJ Olive supported and supplemented the live instrumental playing with samples of Bartok’s original recordings. Prominent here was the setar, a plucked string instrument capable of produc ing a number of tones at once that have an appealing ping.

Very quickly, however, we became aware of a downside of having a quasiclassical program in the Knitting Factory. Another event involving considerably louder music was going on elsewhere in the building, and its insistent beat intruded on what we heard. This was especially unfortunate in the “Sonata for Cello Solo,” an early work by another Hungarian, Gyorgy Ligeti. But Goulash also involves amplification, and it was able to fight back, to a degree: It was still possible to enjoy Mr. Haimovitz’s firm, introspective playing of the brooding first movement and the vigor with which he dispatched the passagework of the concluding second movement.

Bartok’s familiar “Romanian Folk Dances” followed in an arrangement for four cellos by Luna Pearl Woolf, a composer who also happens to be Mr. Haimovitz’s wife. In this affecting work,Mr. Haimovitz took the tune most of the time, allowing himself a fair amount of rhythmic freedom while his colleagues supplied sonorous support.The nostalgic “Buciumeana” was charged with special feeling.

Then came another solo for Mr. Haimovitz, a piece by Tod Machover that was more episodic in content than the Ligeti, stronger in its Oriental flavor, and similarly adept in playing to the instrument’s strengths. Mr. Haimovitz gave it an arresting performance.

Bartok’s “First Rhapsody for Violin and Piano” is another piece that blossomed in Ms. Woolf’s arrangement for cellos. The players dealt admirably with its discursive nature and delivered a superb rendition.

For the finale, the players set their sights farther east – and abandoned their classical orientation – by offering Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.”With its striking syncopated pattern of four long notes and two short ones, which recurs like a rondo theme, “Kashmir” made for a bracing conclusion. And thanks to the similarity of its Oriental melodic style, it fit in with what came before astonishingly well.

Mr. Haimovitz and special guests will perform again on March 26 & April 2 at the Knitting Factory (74 Leonard Street, between Church Street and Broadway, 212-219-3132).