Guitar aficionados are in for a treat this weekend when the innovative guitar duo Julian Lage and Chris Eldridge play the Hawaii Theatre.

They’ll be joined by Americana singer/songwriter Aoife O’Donovan, whose warm, clear vocals and intimate lyrics have been featured on Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion,” the Grammy-winning “Goat Rodeo Sessions” with Chris Thile and Yo-Yo Ma, and on folk-rock circuits for years.

Lage and Eldridge have been playing together for about seven years and have carved a reputation for a uniquely pleasing style. Lage is an acclaimed jazz player on electric guitar, while Eldridge has roots in bluegrass. When together, they perform on acoustic, flat-top guitars, a combination that allows them to create a panoply of inventive melodies, rich textures and colorful sounds.

“They meet within a form they have created, not as soloists exchanging breaks but as a duet playing parts, some written, some improvised,” wrote music critic Alec Wilkinson of the New Yorker in a review of “Mount Royal,” their most recent album. “The instrumentals involve melodies within carefully worked-out rhythmic sections. They rely at times on the guitar’s capacity for percussive effect, and they play with a clarity like that of singers who enunciate so that you can hear every word.

“Even in our present moment of great richness in music of all kinds, it has the virtue of sounding like nothing else.”

Eldridge is the son of Ben Eldridge, banjo player for the Bluegrass Hall of Fame band Seldom Scene. He spent his childhood at bluegrass concerts and hearing the music around the house.

“That being said, when I was a boy and really starting to take an interest in music, it was ‘anything but bluegrass,’” he said in an interview from Nashville, his hometown. “Everything that wasn’t bluegrass was interesting to me. And then as I got older, I really came to appreciate that music a lot.”

Eldridge went on study at Oberlin College, where he was enthralled to find students of diverse interests and talents; one of his friends specialized in Indian music, others liked jazz and progressive rock. He also benefited from formal instruction in music at Oberlin’s well-regarded music conservatory, having been primarily self-taught until then.

“It showed me this different way to think about music. I sort of learned that you can kind of think about music in the abstract almost the same way you would about algebra,” said Eldridge, who also performs with Punch Brothers, a progressive bluegrass band. “I think that’s a really powerful tool to have in your toolbox. When you’ve reached the limits of your intuition, it can be good to know what’s going on in this abstract sense to kind of pull you out of it.”

He treasures his relationship with Lage, who also has a degree in music. The two initially met after a Punch Brothers concert and planned for years to work together. “I finally had time and called him up and put some dates in the book, and that’s all it took,” Eldridge said. “And now we have a band. It’s a two-person band, but it’s a band nonetheless.

“I’m always shocked, amazed and delighted that we get to play together, he’s such an incredible musician. Julian is truly a visionary of the instrument and a remarkable virtuoso. It’s incredible to stand next to him every night and watch him redefine what a flat-top guitar can do.”

In concert, the two of them don’t so much play music as have conversations through music, with the content meandering freely from subject to subject. A YouTube video of them performing “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” for example, begins with something that sounds somewhat like the “Twilight Zone” theme song, mixes in a few bars of dissonant blues, then morphs into the traditional bluegrass tune, blending in a bit of gypsy jazz for good measure.

Eldridge said he feels privileged to be in this position as a performer, innovator and explorer of music and his instrument.

“We’re lucky as people who do this for a living that we do that and that’s all we do, and we give all of ourselves to that,” he said. “It’s a lifelong pursuit, and we’re very lucky that people come and are interested to see what we’re exploring.”