Anderson & Roe attack the keys with intensity.

Decades ago, two San Francisco-based string quartets – first the Kronos Quartet in the mid-’70s, followed by 1985’s Turtle Island String Quartet – set out to stretch the envelope of what a string quartet can be, via genres other than the classical idiom. Think jazz standards, world music, indie rock, even Eric Clapton’sCrossroads and Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” and “Gypsy Eyes.” The groups took listeners by storm, and they are still touring the world today.

Visiting as part of the Carmel Bach Festival July 28 are two pianists who seek to do the same thing for piano. Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe comprise the Anderson & Roe Piano Duo, and their sonic shenanigans are delineating entirely new soundscapes for solo and duo piano material.

“We really believe in opening the ears and eyes of new audiences,” Roe says. “I like artists that take risks and provide a new perspective, on the arts [and] life.”

The Anderson & Roe mission statement is to make classical music a relevant and powerful force in society. The two met as students at Juilliard, and began performing together in 2002. Both are accomplished piano soloists and together they now possess a resume decorated with the chart-topping albums, Grammy nods and high-level concert appearances worldwide.

Yet they also have Emmy nominations for self-produced music videos, many of which have guerilla theater elements to them. One from February of this year covers Taylor Swift’s hit “Shake It Off,” filmed on what looks like the roof of the Steinway Piano Factory in Queens, New York. Another offers Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” on two pianos outside on the Midland College campus in Texas, which engendered a multi-generational, ethnically diverse crowd of head-bobbing and breakdancing passersby.

Electrifying would be too small a word to describe the duo. The playing here, and on stage, is highly contrapuntal and courts cascading chromaticism in a musical environment of severe risk-taking and wide open experimentation.

And the selections for their local appearance? “We have an extremely intense, wild program prepared,” Anderson says. “It’s very focused even though the music looks like it’s hitting every spectrum of genre and style. It’s wild, and we’re excited about it.”

If it’s wild enough for even him to say so, then it will be wild with a capital W.

ANDERSON AND ROE PIANO DUO Thursday, July 28. Carmel Bach Festival at Sunset Center, San Carlos and Ninth Avenue, Carmel. $56-$80. 620-2048, www.sunsetcenter.org