Defining Her Place With a Different Ax : Pop music: Lili Haydn is making inroads into the world of rock . . . with her violin. ‘It’s my main voice, and I try to sing with it,’ she says.

Violin isn’t the standard rock ‘n’ roll instrument of choice, but don’t tell that to Lili Haydn.

Her rapidly growing list of credits includes playing live or recording with everyone from B.B. King and Sandra Bernhard to Porno for Pyros and Bill Laswell. Recently she lent her fiddle to Hootie & the Blowfish’s current hit album and to upcoming albums by Paula Abdul and Quincy Jones, and even joined ex-Led Zeppelin main men Robert Plant and Jimmy Page on stage during their recent appearance at the Forum.

“The paradox in my music is combining classical with the aggressive grooves of the rock rhythm section, juxtaposing those two,” Haydn says. “Trying to fuse those influences is a musical manifestation of a particular spiritual evolution--or at least my growing pains.”

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The 24-year-old Toronto native has been a rising presence in the L.A. club scene for several years, first with a chamber-styled trio and then last year with her first rock-oriented band, which played weekly at the Genghis Cantina. In November, she retooled her unusual band--with her torrid violin improvisations backed by two cellos, bass, drums, percussion, guitar and keyboards--for a residency at the Viper Room that continues every Sunday night.

Capping her ascent: a record deal with Atlantic records. Haydn plans to go into the studio in September to record her debut album.

“There’s nobody out there doing what Lili’s doing,” says Kevin Williamson, the Atlantic Records executive who signed Haydn to the label. “She incorporates everything from rock to funk to even jazz elements, from simple, beautiful haunting melodies to heavy rock, and somehow pulls it off.”

“I don’t approach violin like most,” says Haydn, who plays both acoustically and with effects more common to electric guitar, including reverb, wah-wah and a whammy pedal. “It’s my main voice, and I try to sing with it. I try not to be limited by convention, and I use it rhythmically.”

More recently, she has been using her real voice as well. Though she never planned on a career as a vocalist, she’s working hard at it, naming among her role models Victoria Williams and, as she termed them, such “breathy girls” as Kate Bush and Tori Amos.

As a songwriter, she draws on her real-life emotions, with her songs currently reflecting a series of traumas she went through two years ago, including the deaths of two grandparents and a split with her then-boyfriend.

“I went through a rough time, and that’s manifested in the lyrics,” she says.

The musical pursuits, though, are not Haydn’s first contact with show business. She’s the daughter of performance artist and comedian Lotus Weinstock. Her father, whose name she refused to give, never lived with her mother through 18 years of marriage. Haydn herself worked as a child actor in several network TV series--including regular roles as the 7-year-old daughter of “Mrs. Columbo” in 1979 and as the title character’s best friend in the 1986-1988 syndicated series “The New Gidget.” The earnings from those roles supported her as she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at Brown University.

“I’ve grown up in show biz,” she says. “That’s not who I am now.”

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After graduating, she returned to L.A. and began performing around town, gaining semi-regular slots with a dozen or so local bands, ranging from the neo-ska group Weapon of Choice to folk-rock outfits the Brothers Figaro and the Wild Colonials--as well as co-starring with her mother in “Molly & Maze,” a two-woman stage show based on their real relationship that they first staged in L.A. in 1988 and updated for a San Diego run in 1992.

But it was another TV stint that first boosted Haydn’s musical profile, with a brief run last year as bandleader of the all-female group on the short-lived ABC summer replacement sketch comedy show “She TV.”

Musically, her primary influences are the composers she studied as a child: Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Chopin--and Parliament-Funkadelic. “Romantic music has teeth, but with a velvet cushion. I just started showing my teeth in my writing,” Haydn says.

Classical music is where Haydn began, but she soon learned to improvise from playing with her “musically literate” parents.

“The day I got my first violin, my mom wrote a song, ‘Mama’s Pride,’ in G Major so I could have a sense of music right away,” she says.

While she’s aware that she is not writing typical, mainstream music, Haydn isn’t opposed to commercial success, as long as it’s on her own terms. Her mother, she says, never compromised her integrity, giving Haydn “the courage to walk the tightrope of making a living as a musician in Los Angeles. All I want is to be true, to express myself as gracefully as possible.”

* Lili Haydn performs each Sunday at 10 p.m. at the Viper Room, 8852 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 358-1880. $10.