Someday, Grace Kelly might walk onto the Grammy Award ceremony stage like so many groups she admires did on Feb. 10. Performers such as The Black Keys, Adele and, perhaps her favorite, a collaboration between Bruno Mars and Sting, all made an impression last Sunday during what is - for better or for worse - music’s biggest night.

She’s already well on her way to joining them.

Kelly, 20, wrote her first song at age 7 after learning three chords on the piano.

“The melody just kind of happened,” she says before a recent concert in Ohio.

That melody - or rather, melodies - continue for the vocalist, composer and saxophone player, who has only increased the rate of her precipitous rise through the jazz ranks. She left high school at the age of 16, got her general education development degree and took a full-ride scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, located near her hometown.

She graduated from college at 19, then returned to the touring schedule she’d already established. Kelly will lead her group, the Grace Kelly Quintet, in a pair of shows on Saturday night at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville.

Kelly moved on quickly from the piano. She briefly tried clarinet, but it was the saxophone that really captured her imagination. It didn’t hurt that some of her favorite musicians were Stan Getz and Charlie Parker.

Or that she was already picking up an affinity for jazz music. Kelly didn’t much care for lessons that forced her to memorize works note bynote. Jazz, on the other hand, provided her an instant creative outlet.

“The spontaneity of jazz excited me,” she says.

Even though her roots are thoroughly entrenched in jazz, Kelly has always flirted with the edges of the genre, too. As an example, she points to her new album, “Live at Scullers,” recorded at her favorite jazz club in Boston. She’s still not of legal drinking age, but she has been playing at the club for years.

“Live at Scullers” features a collection of mostly original cuts, most of which feature her vocals, but it veers in manydirections, Kelly says. She has an idea what it will take her to earn Grammy accolades - a combination of musicality and mainstream notions of melody.

“The music has to be something unique, something (memorable),” Kelly says. That’s the rationale behind cuts such the disc’s opener, “Please Don’t Box Me In.”

That’s the way she handles concerts, too. Kelly and her bandmates will perform a mix of tunes from her extensive repertoire - she’s already released six albums, in spite of her youth - and she’ll call out the number as the mood andcrowd demand.

Her mix of pop bravado and youth may serve her well.

And it may take her into the mainstream too, some linestraddling place that finds her appreciated by critics and lovedoutside the genre. She recently had a young man come up to her with the message that he didn’t usually like jazz, but he liked her jazz.

“It’s something that’s naturally progressing,” Kelly says.

Whats Up, Pages 15 on 02/15/2013