​Sarah Neufeld to play at the Aquarium

With the many projects violinist Sarah Neufeld is involved in, it’s hard for her to catch a break from it all and do her own thing. But with her two bands — Arcade Fire and instrumental band Bell Orchestre — taking some time off, she finally has time to do a proper tour for her second solo album.

Released Feb. 26, “The Ridge” builds on Neufeld’s sound by adding more instrumentation and stepping more into pop minimalism than her violin-centric 2013 release “Hero Brother.”

This time around she added percussion — courtesy of Arcade Fire’s Jeremy Gara — and vocals that stretch beyond the murmurs of her first release. But the violin is still present and her skills are always on display.

The Montreal-based musician has been playing the violin since she was three years old and after all this time, the instrument still amazes her. “It’s got a lot of sonic possibilities that I still get excited about ... and I still find surprising moments,” she says. “Playing with a bow, it’s so dynamic, you can have something that’s really percussive or you can have something that’s just so soft and so nuanced.”

The collaboration with Gara was a new experience for her. While they’ve played together in Arcade Fire for over 10 years, they had never sat down together and worked in such a focused way which contributed to the growth from “Hero Brother” to “The Ridge.”

“I really wanted to work with Jeremy in a rhythmic setting and we ended up using a full kit and I ended up singing more, and just also the compositions are a little bit more spacious and so it sort of invited more characters to come on the scene,” she says.

While Gara couldn’t make it for this tour, Neufeld lucked out by snagging another drummer friend of hers. “I’m really the luckiest person ever to have Stefan Schneider, who’s my colleague from Bell Orchestre,” she says. “Stefan and I have played together in many settings and it’s just great to pull our long-time musical relationship into a duo setting because we’ve never done that before.”

Unlike with “Hero Brother,” Neufeld has the time to do a larger tour to support this new release. Last time around, she found herself sneaking away from Arcade Fire on their days off from touring.

“ ... ‘Hero Brother’ came out right about the same time pretty much that we started touring ‘Reflektor,’ ” Neufeld says. “ I was sort of squeezing in shows between tours or even when we were on tour.”

At times, this meant using a day off from touring to fly to a different city and do a television show and then fly to meet up with the band to play a festival the next day. “This time it’s nice because I get to devote more physical time to the project which is lovely.”

When she’s not busying herself with Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre or her solo career, she’s developed a working relationship with Colin Stetson. The two collaborated on last year’s “Never Were the Way She Was,” which made the long list for the Canadian Polaris Music Prize.

Their relationship began a couple years back when they worked on a film score for the 2013 drama “Blue Caprice,” which led to collaborating on the score for the French war film “La Peur” (“The Fear” in English) and the psychological thriller “Lavender,” which is due for release later this year.

“When are we going to get a fun, happy romantic film?” Neufeld says. “If Colin and I could do a rom-com, that would be great. I’ll play the ukulele.”

When the tour concludes, Neufeld will continue working on new material for Bell Orchestre, which has been inactive since 2009. “We’ve actually started sort of resurrecting the old beast,” she says. “We’re working on a really exciting new body of work together.”

Neufeld has been a member of Arcade Fire since 2004 and has appeared on all of their full-length releases, including the Grammy-award winning album “The Suburbs” and the Grammy-nominated album “Reflektor.” She co-founded Bell Orchestre, which shares members with Arcade Fire, in 2002 and has released two albums with them, 2005’s “Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light” and 2009’s “As Seen Through Windows.”

IF YOU GO

Sarah Neufeld with Eartheater

Saturday, April 2, 9 p.m.

The Aquarium (Dempsey’s upstairs), 226 Broadway N.

$12 advance, $14 doors