Middle age may be encroaching but a disarming spontaneity and playful sense of humor came through in our recent conversation.

“I do look weirdly young and I still get carded for god’s sake,” says St. John. “And since I don’t drive I just have a passport and bartenders have to stare at it to verify my age.”

That passport has gotten plenty of use outside of bars and nightclubs.  A native of London, Ontario, St. John entered the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia at age 13 and transferred to the Moscow Conservatory three years later.  Continued studies followed in London, Boston and New York.

Currently St. John spends about half of the year on the road.  When she’s home in Manhattan, she takes comfort in being with her pet iguana, collaborates with a wide array of musicians — she’s a founding member of a polka band — and manages the record label Ancalagon, which she founded in 2000.

“I named the label after my dear departed iguana, who died a few weeks before I started it,” she explains.  “I now have a brand new iguana, he’s about a year and a half old. I’ve been on tour for about a month and just brought him home from the sitter and so I’m a happy girl. I got him a year and two months ago and after 21 years of chain smoking I stopped at that same time.  I credit him with the fact that I’m clean from nicotine.”

Asked how a native of Canada could develop a soft spot for tropical reptiles, St. John brings up her enthusiasm for dragons and fondness for the fantasy writers J. R. R. Tolkien and Ursula La Guin. She then shifts gears and recalls her earliest days as a violinist.

“When I was a kid, my mom would bribe me to practice, and we’d go to these little competitions and if I earned a prize, I got one more plastic dinosaur,” she says. “I started violin at age two and this obsession began around four. But that’s why I practiced between ages of 6 and 12. I credit reptilian beings with quiet a bit!”

Besides having salamanders crawling on the logo of her recordings, St. John’s recorded repertoire has also been decidedly non-traditional, at least by classical standards.

A recent recording of Mozart violin concertos has been on the Billboard charts for 15 weeks and counting, and there are also a couple of Bach titles.  But the Ancalagon label, which is devoted exclusively to St. John’s own projects, also features a gypsy disc and a polka collection, titled “Polkastra: Apolkalypse Now.”

“Our band’s next project is a wedding album with wedding tunes from all over the world,” says St. John. “Kids loved our first disc and weddings are the last place people actually dance.”

Amidst talk about pets, travel and polkas, St. John did manage to address her upcoming recital, which places works of George Gershwin and Stephen Foster alongside Beethoven and Debussy and others.  While saying how eager she is to finally play in the famed Troy Savings Bank Music Hall — friends on Facebook have been gushing to her about its acoustics — she explains that the program is meant to be upbeat and enjoyable. One might expect nothing less from such a vivacious conversationalist, but St. John counters that notion.

“During the last year or two, I did a bunch of recitals that were so heavy, with Bartok and Schoenberg and some really scary Beethoven,” she explains. “I want people to smile this time. It’s still substantial but nothing will make you cry your heart out.”

Lara St John with transexual porn star Buck Angel