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It took a single summer camp to convince Physics of Meaning violinist/singer Daniel Hart that classical music wasn’t what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

Until then, he had grown up studying classic music and performing it on a regular basis as part of a youth orchestra. Drama had captured his attention in high school, but his attention was still focused on classical violin until his senior year.

“I went to summer music camp, and I practiced classical violin for five hours a day,” he told The Daily Times this week. “That’s when I realized I didn’t want to study classical music, and I decided I wanted to do drama-related things. I took a break from playing violin for a year or so, but then I met people in the music department at college, and we started playing jazz, blues and Irish jigs. That’s when I started getting into violin again.”

By the time Hart graduated from college, he had reconciled the two loves of his life — violin and drama. He didn’t have to choose one or the other; he could incorporate both into what he wanted to do with his life.

“I realized that music and theater weren’t as separate as I first thought,” he said. “At first, felt I had to choose one or the other because both take up so much time and energy. But with The Physics of Meaning, I’m learning to create dialogue and characters and have them come out in the songs. It’s also about putting on a stage show — it’s similar to what you see in the theater in some ways. I feel like they’ve both come together in a natural way.”

His abilities as a vocalist and a violinist made Hart an in-demand musician in North Carolina’s fertile Triangle music scene. He’s collaborated with St. Vincent, singer-songwriter John Vanderslice and The Polyphonic Spree. It was with the latter band — a self-described “choral symphonic rock” group from Dallas that usually consists of 26 members (a 10-person choir, two keyboardists, a percussionist, drummer, bassist, guitarist, flautist, trumpeter, trombonist, violinist/violist, harpist, French horn player, pedal steel player, theremin player and an electronic effects person, among others) on stage at one time — that Hart learned that theater and music could be incorporated into a singular art project.

“I think that the main influence for me was– playing in The Polyphonic Spree for a couple of years,” Hart said. “Tim (DeLaughter, vocalist) is very much a showman, a real front person. He dances around, pumps his fist in the air, sings and shakes his head, and everybody else on stage is jumping up and down as well. And when you’re one of those other people and not responsible for carrying the show, you get to that comfortable place in the middle.

“It’s like, I knew people were kind of watching me, but really they were watching the whole thing. You don’t have to get embarrassed about jumping around and you can just focus on having a good time and playing the music well. That was the main place where I was able to get comfortable jumping around on stage a little bit.”

When The Polyphonic Spree got the opportunity to open for rock icon David Bowie, Hart was there every night, watching Bowie from the wings and studying how the legendary singer incorporated theatricality into an earnest and heartfelt musical endeavor. It also served as an inspiration, he said, because it taught him that being genuine is the key to pulling off a flamboyant stage show.

In the past several years, a number of bands — The Decemberists, The Dresden Dolls, The Arcade Fire — have drawn on Bowie’s early 1970s example. The success of such bands has given a boost to bands like The Physics of Meaning, which plays a brand of melodic indie-pop overlaid with classical flourishes that’s best described as “chamber rock.”

“I grew up in the 1980s, when I think the decadence of showmanship and performance reached an all-time high with glam metal and hair metal bands like Poison,” Hart said. “They took it to this level that made it seem a little ridiculous, and in the 1990s, there was a backlash — the indie-rock, shoegazer, grunge movement that saw that sort of thing as pretentious or ridiculous or not honest in some way.

“It seems to me that it just goes in cycles. I think now that people have digested that way of walking away from showmanship, they’re finding ways to do it that are more natural and honest. Watching David Bowie play ever night was so inspiring, because he’s found a way to be very engaging, energetic and exciting in a showmanship way. He definitely was putting on a show and wasn’t just sitting down with the audience, one-on-one.”

Next spring, The Physics of Meaning will release its second album, “Snake Charmer and Destiny at the Stroke of Midnight,” and Hart has put together an outfit to bring the album to life on stage — which he’ll do Saturday night at The Pilot Light.

(One of the members of Hart’s band is local singer-songwriter Wil Wright, the front man of local rock band Senryu and The Skeleton Coast; Wright will perform a solo set to open up Saturday’s show.) He’s the ringleader of the on-stage circus, the guy who’s the driving force behind the music and the musicians who make it.

“I’ve gotten to a place where I can get beyond being nervous about being pretentious on stage and try to engage the audience and just worry about being a good showman and a good front person,” he said. “I never used to refer to myself as that, but I do front this band, and with that comes a certain responsibility. I enjoy that, and I enjoy putting on a show for people that makes them come away saying, ‘OK, now my night is better than it was before I came here to see them play.’”