Ain't misbehavin'

BROOKLINE -- A Duke Ellington poster hangs on her bedroom door. By her bedside sits a stack of CDs by Stan Getz and other jazz masters. One more clue that Grace Kelly is not your typical eighth-grader: Tonight at Scullers Jazz Club she'll be playing selections from her latest recording, a two-disc set titled ''Grace Kelly Times Too."

A virtuoso on the alto saxophone, the 13-year-old Kelly is also a talented songwriter and vocalist who promises ''some fun surprises" during the Scullers show. Such as?

''Well," says Kelly, seated in the living room of her family's home near Coolidge Corner, ''I have been known to tap dance while playing the saxophone. We'll see."

When it comes to Kelly's talents, seeing -- and hearing -- is believing. Or so goes the buzz around the local jazz community, where audiences and musicians are raving about the range, taste, and sophistication she already exhibits at an age when most players are still mastering their scales.

In Maryland last month, Kelly became the youngest finalist in the history of an annual scholarship competition staged during the East Coast Jazz Festival. She finished third in a field of 10 finalists, all college-age or older, winning $1,500 and an invitation to perform at next year's festival. Her two CDs -- the first came out a year ago -- boast a group of veteran accompanists including John Lockwood on bass, Doug Johnson and Ken Berman on piano, Yoron Israel and Guy Godwin on drums, and Adam Larrabee on guitar.

Onstage, she's jammed with the likes of Lee Konitz, Jeremy Udden, Bo and Bill Winiker, and Jerry Bergonzi. Konitz, Udden, Bergonzi, and Berman have also tutored Kelly, who attends the Driscoll Elementary School and takes classes at the New England Conservatory and Brookline Music School.

While many of his younger students are capable technicians, says Udden, ''Grace plays with an emotion that's almost strange to see in a 13-year-old. You not only hear it, you see it in her face when she's playing."

For her age, says Udden, ''she's easily the most talented student I've seen."

And one of the most time-challenged students around, according to Kelly and her parents, Bob Kelly and Irene Chang, who own the Wild Goose Chase gift store on Beacon Street.

An A student, Kelly adheres to an extracurricular schedule crammed with lessons and practicing. Weekday activities include saxophone tutorials, jam sessions, piano lessons, dance classes, and vocal training. On Saturdays she takes an all-day class at NEC. Sundays she'll often rehearse with a Brookline Music School ensemble or take a monthly master class with Bergonzi, a tenor saxophonist who toured for many years with Dave Brubeck.

Kelly has played the Regattabar, the Acton Jazz Cafe, the Center for Arts in Natick, and Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola at New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center, among other venues. With two CDs and several TV and radio interviews behind her, she's been fielding offers to perform everywhere from local schools to jazz festivals as far away as Spain and Singapore.

''I try to balance my music, life, and homework," Kelly says. ''But there's not much time for anything else." She smiles and adds, ''I don't just hang out with my friends a lot. Although I have turned them on to Miles Davis and Charlie Parker."

Bring up the p-word, though, and Kelly's smile quickly disappears. ''I don't like the term 'prodigy,' " she says. ''It sounds like something you have, not something you work hard on."

''I'm not a musician, so I get my validation from other musicians," says Bob Kelly, who serves as his daughter's booking agent, publicist, roadie, chauffeur, and sometimes lyricist. ''So when Nat Hentoff [the respected jazz writer and critic] calls up to say how much he loves Grace's music, I start believing for real."

Her mother notes that Grace is not the only family member with musical aptitude. Both Chang's mother and her grandmother taught piano in their native South Korea, and her sister is a classically trained violinist. Grace's older sister Christina, now a freshman at Harvard, has been involved in music and drama at a high level, too.

''We've always had music playing in the house," Chang says, ''from Broadway musicals to Stan Getz albums to public radio shows like Ron Della Chiesa's [on WGBH-FM]. Grace has been exposed to it all her life."

Kelly jokes that because she is young and Asian, people often assume she must be (a) Japanese-American and (b) a violin whiz.

''I've threatened to write a song called 'What Country Are You From, Violin Girl?' " she says mischievously.

Kelly's first song, ''On My Way Home," was composed when she was 7 years old. At 10, she took up the clarinet but soon switched to the alto saxophone (''The clarinet didn't do it for me"), which suited her much better. Berman, a Berklee College of Music graduate, was teaching music at Driscoll and thought enough of Kelly's composition skills to introduce her to bass player Lockwood and Peter Kontrimas, owner of a Westwood recording studio

In 2004, Kelly and friends went into the studio to cut a one-track demo. The project kept expanding, however, until they had enough for a 12-song CD, mixing six of Kelly's tunes with arrangements of ''Blue Skies," ''Stardust," and other jazz standards. Singer-songwriter Ann Hampton Callaway, who met Kelly three years ago, supplied the liner notes. ''Grace is following her heart," Callaway wrote, ''and that path is sure to lead her on a great adventure that all listeners . . . will relish."

On her latest recording, Kelly plays and sings a jazz-pop blend that pays homage to influences as varied as Ella Fitzgerald, Paul Desmond, Stevie Wonder, and the Beatles.

''I'm very lucky to make even one CD," she says. ''My goal is having my music reach as many people as possible and touch them in a personal way."

For someone Kelly's age -- the braces came off her teeth two weeks ago -- that goal seems, frankly, rather lofty. Then again, this is a 13-year-old who falls asleep at night listening to Sonny Rollins. When she picks up her 1954 Selmer Mark VI alto sax, magical things have been known to happen.

''It would have been cool to see guys like John Coltrane and Charlie Parker play live," says Kelly. ''But it's also cool to rediscover their music and fuse jazz with contemporary pop. I'm glad I'm exposed to today's music, even if I don't listen to Kiss-108."

Joseph P. Kahn can be reached at jkahn@globe.com.