Local fave Jenna Mammina returns to Carmel with her genre-hopping repertoire.

Jenna Mammina doesn''t pay much attention to genres. A gamine faced singer with wide-open ears, Mammina picks and chooses from American popular music at will, grabbing an R&B tune here, nabbing a country ditty there. Transforming whatever song comes into her orbit, she combines a singer/songwriter''s confessional air with the loose, rhythmically assured approach of a jazz singer.

While at first her voice can seem coy and breathy, more ingenue than diva, the girlishness vanishes when she rises into her upper register to reveal an edge that cuts to a song''s emotional core. The effect can be startling, whether she''s gently murmuring Tom Waits'' "Hope That I Don''t Fall In Love With You," or putting a lascivious spin on the Fats Waller/Andy Razaf standard "Honeysuckle Rose."

"I don''t want to categorize the music," says Mammina, who performs on Saturday at the Jazz & Blues Company with her musical soulmate, guitarist Andre Bush. "It''s not that I don''t know who I am. I don''t sing classical, and I''m not a soul singer, or an R&B singer, but I have been influenced by that stuff too. I can sing a Patsy Cline tune, a James Taylor tune or a Led Zeppelin tune, but I do it with my own flair."

While Mammina has developed something of a cult following in the Bay Area, she spends much of her time on the road, working as a duo with Bush. They recently released a breathtaking album Art of the Duo (Mama Grace Records) that captures their deep musical connection and omnivorous musical sensibility. Whether introducing their finely wrought original pieces, interpreting standards like "Time After Time" and "Them There Eyes" or transforming contemporary material like Elvis Costello''s "Everyday I Write the Book," Mammina and Bush blend ravishing lyricism with an unsentimental sensuality.

No newcomer to the Bay Area music scene-she moved to the East Bay in the mid-''80s and now splits her time between El Cerrito and San Francisco-Mammina has worked and performed in all the varied contexts one would expect from such an eclectic artist. Besides her ongoing pop studio work, she spent years singing dance music with Elzy Love, fronted a number of rock bands (remember Mean Joe Greene and the Kid?) and garnered a lot of attention in the mid-''90s with the Blues for Allah project, which focused on jazzy, impressionistic tunes by the Grateful Dead.

After years of working on other peoples'' projects, Mammina decided to create her own musical manifesto in 1999. The result was a remarkably mature debut recording Under the Influence, which included tunes by James Taylor, Led Zeppelin, Abbey Lincoln and Sammy Fain. Her follow-up, last year''s sublime Meant To Be (both on Mama Grace), features a similarly disparate program, with tunes by U2, Steely Dan, Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. With a cast featuring Bay Area luminaries like pianist Matt Rollings, reed player Paul McCandless, cellist Matt Brubeck, violinist Darol Anger and Rob Burger on accordion, Mammina displays her gift for turning any song that strikes her fancy into a potent vehicle for self-expression.