Violinist Carla Kihlstedt is a founding member of both Tin Hat Trio, and of the art-rock band Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Most recently, Carla released a solo project, Two Foot Yard, using both her violin and her voice simultaneously. She was also one of three singers in the band Charming Hostess for six years. She studied at the Peabody Institute, the San Francisco, and the Oberlin Conservatories of Music, and has performed as soloist with the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra, the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, and the Bach Ensemble of Baltimore, and has won prizes in several international competitions including the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition in England.

She has become an influential musical voice in the San Francisco Bay Area since moving there in 1994, and has been involved in a number of collaborative projects both as composer and/or performer with John Schott, Ben Goldberg, and choreographer Jo Kreiter. She has also played with Eugene Chadbourne, John Zorn, Earplay, and members of the Rova Saxophone Quartet.

Carla is also very involved in contemporary classical music. She was a featured soloist on the MATA festival in New York (produced by Phillip Glass) playing both her own compositions and pieces commissioned for her by the festival. She also performed with clarinetist, Don Byron in the Vienna Festival with Klangforum Wien, and was commissioned by the Merkin Concert Hall emerging composer series (Zoom: Composers Close-Up) to write a piece for clarinetist David Krakauer. She is a frequent performer with Ear Play, the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.

She has contributed to the recordings of Tom Waits, The Grassy Knoll & Mr Bungle.