Genre-Defying Jazz: Cécile McLorin Salvant Live at Sag Harbor American Music Festival

Cécile McLorin Salvant has a voice that stops time.

Six of her seven albums have been nominated for Grammy Awards in jazz vocals. But ask her to define her music, and she won’t point to a genre. She won’t point to anything, really — except herself.

She writes what she wants, sings what she feels, and pushes musical boundaries wherever her instincts lead. Those instincts come from a kaleidoscope of influences.

“I’ll give a brief list,” she said with a smile. “But there are many more.”

Yes, there are the icons — Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday — whose echoes can be heard in the richness of her tone. But alongside them are the Spice Girls, Björk and Alice in Chains.

It’s a reminder that McLorin Salvant isn’t an archival voice to be played on an old turntable. Her artistry carries the weight of history, but it’s also playful, fresh and firmly facing forward.

For Kelly Dodds, founder and co-president of the Sag Harbor American Music Festival, that refusal to fit neatly in a box is exactly why she belongs on the SHAMF stage.

“People know her as a jazz artist, but she really embodies so much more,” Dodds said. “She seamlessly blends many genres of music, and it works.”

Choosing a headliner is no small feat for Dodds and her SHAMF partner, Kerry Farrell. Their list of past performers reads like a music lover’s dream — Joan Osborne, Jon Cleary, Dan Tyminski, Amythyst Kiah — and they are determined to keep raising the bar.

“Kerry and I have an ongoing list of people we would want to have,” Dodds said. “And we got lucky with Cécile. She is opening the New York Philharmonic the night before the festival, and that’s why we can afford her.”

For years, they’d hoped to bring her to Sag Harbor, but her growing stack of Grammys seemed to place her out of reach.

“Her voice is singular in our minds,” Dodds said. “She starts singing, and everything else stops. You are absorbed by her voice. It’s compelling.”

McLorin Salvant’s new album, “Oh Snap,” will be released just days before her SHAMF performance.

“I don’t usually build my show much in advance,” she said. “We play things based on the moment. The set is very flexible, and many times there’s no set at all. I do think we will be doing things from the new album, though.”

She’ll take the stage with pianist Glenn Zaleski, bassist Yasushi Nakamura and drummer Kyle Poole. “Kyle and Yasushi are both on the upcoming album,” she said. “Glenn is a wonderful pianist we’ve been lucky to play with for the past four to five years.”

The album’s title track is a study in freedom: rhythmically adventurous, vocally playful, exploratory. McLorin Salvant wrote the songs at home, alone, with her keyboard, before layering in other voices.

“I produced the tracks, choosing the keyboard sounds, the beat, the bass sounds, orchestrating it,” she said. “Then we added some live percussion by Keita Ogawa and Weedie Braimah. Sullivan [Fortner] added a couple of lines on top of my synth pads.”

Ask her about jazz tradition, and she pushes back on the label. “I have never set out to depart from or even to approach a particular jazz sound,” she said. “Genres are invented concepts, rarely invented by musicians, that have extremely murky boundaries. Genres are fascinating to me, but I don’t view them as laws. I go where my intuition sends me.”

That intuition is sending her on quite a week — performing with the New York Philharmonic one night, headlining SHAMF a few days later, and releasing her eighth album in between.

“She’s captivating,” Dodds said. “The meaning of the word is Cécile. Every time I listen to her voice, everything else falls away. A lot of people agree with us, and we are very lucky to lure her to Sag Harbor for the night to perform with us.”