Regina Carter, the "genius grant"-winning jazz violinist whose career has already spanned fusion, the avant garde, mainstream jazz, and improvisational versions of Ravel and Debussy performed on a world-famous violin, is up to something new again.

When she performs Saturday at the August Wilson Center, she'll be previewing tunes from her soon-to-be-released CD "Reverse Thread." It's a collection of folk- and folk-like melodies from the African diaspora, arranged for violin, accordion, bass, drums and the kora (a 21-string West African harp/lute).

The CD's music comes from "all over the world," Carter says by phone from her home in New Jersey, which she shares with her husband, Alvester Garnett, the drummer in her band.

"It's music that has been influenced by either rhythms or melodies of Africa. The melodies are very simple but very singable and beautiful, or fun and danceable. I have a piece from Madagascar, they have an accordion tradition there. There's a piece from the Ugandan Jews. There's a piece written by a Puerto Rican musician. And then there's some stuff from Mali.

"You start to hear how cultures have really had an effect on one another, and our music has had an effect on each other, and things that sound very Irish are coming out of the depths of some part of Africa."

Carter funded the record herself in order to exercise total artistic control. It's her first record in more than three years, and her first indie release after CDs on Verve and Atlantic.

Not entirely by coincidence, she allows, the recording comes three years after she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (they're called "genius grants" ) for $500,000. It's a no-strings-attached award given to people in diverse professions deemed likely to be helped by the money to continue significant work.

"Yeah, it changed my life," says the Detroit-born musician, who is in her mid-40s. "It kind of gave me some breathing room, to do this record and be able to pay for it myself and do what I wanted to do. And it gave me a chance to take about a good year off from working. I went back to school. I ended up just taking one course, the intro to music therapy. But I am still interested in figuring out how I can use music and come up with some type of program for either helping children with learning disabilities or terminal patients. I have a niece who's a special-needs child, and music is our own special world."

The daughter of an auto worker and an elementary school teacher, Carter started on piano at the age of 2, composing her own songs.

"I had two older brothers that were taking [piano], and my mom said that one day I walked up to the piano and played one of the pieces one of my brothers had been working on. The teacher tested me and saw that I had an ear and I had a gift."

When she was 4, Carter was enrolled in a Suzuki method class for string players. She progressed through the classical repertoire but eventually was smitten with jazz.

"My first introduction to jazz was by way of three jazz violinists -- Noel Pointer, Jean Luc Ponty and Stephane Grappelli. That's what really turned my head, and I said, 'OK, this is what I want to do.' "

Her mother, who would have preferred that she continue with classical music, bought her jazz records one Christmas when Regina was about 16.

"I asked for jazz records, and she brought home Miles Davis' 'Bitches Brew,' Eric Dolphy's 'Out to Lunch' and Ornette Coleman's 'Dancing in Your Head.' " (None of these are considered particularly easy listening.)

"Well I don't think she was that hip," Carter says with a laugh. "I think either the guy at the record store, they were his favorites, or she said, 'Give me the most far-out stuff you have so I can convince her not to play this music!' "

Carter studied violin at the New England Conservatory for two years but graduated from Oakland University near Detroit. There, her big band teacher seated her with the alto saxophonists and had her play alto sax parts on violin.

"He said, 'Stop listening to violinists because there are so few out there, that you are going to end up sounding just like one of them. You want to have your own voice, so listen to horn players or singers or anyone else.' "

Carter gradually forged a distinctive style -- combining traces of Grappelli's gypsy swing, Charlie Parker's bebop, immaculate classical technique minus much of the vibrato, and improvisations with bluesy slurs that evoke the human voice.

After college, Carter lived in Germany for two years, toured and recorded with an all-female jazz group from Detroit called Straight Ahead, and scuffled in the New York avant-garde jazz scene with the String Trio of New York and other ensembles. She made her first CD as a leader in 1995, but she loomed even larger on the jazz map when she toured in Wynton Marsalis' long-form piece "Blood on the Fields."

Her own projects became more ambitious. In 2001, she became the first jazz musician to play the famous Il Cannone Guarnerius (Guarneri's Cannon), a violin made in 1743 by Giuseppe Guarneri and played by the 19th-century virtuoso Niccolo Paganini. The violin is maintained, displayed and closely guarded by the city of Genoa, Italy.

To perform in Genoa and later record a CD on the instrument, "Paganini: After a Dream," she had to overcome hostility from some of Genoa's creakier patrons of classical music, not to mention the skepticism of her label. Her success illustrates the resolve and single-mindedness that lurk beneath her casual, quick-to-laugh exterior.

"Verve wasn't really that supportive in the beginning, they didn't think the record was going to do well. So I hired a publicist because I so believed in that record. I hired a film crew. They all went to Italy with me. I paid for all of that."

Carter's next CD, "I'll Be Seeing You: A Sentimental Journey," honored her mother, who passed away in 2005. The CD included songs from the '20s to '40s. Earlier in her career, Carter had written and recorded a song for her mom entitled "Something For Grace."

Also earlier in her career, Carter got the chance to do several tours with the late, great Pittsburgh bassist Ray Brown.

"What an amazing blessing that was to be able to work with him and hear all his stories. You know when you play with someone like that, you're learning on the bandstand. You get your butt kicked," she says with a laugh. "It's nerve-racking but exciting at the same time.

"And he was just such a beautiful spirit. My first day with him I was in Europe. And he calls me into his room and he says, 'Sit down. So, do you own any property? Do you have this? Are you investing in this?' He goes, 'You gotta have your business together, you gotta have this in order.' He was a lot like my mom in that regard. I think he looked at everyone on his bandstand as his children. It went beyond the music. It was just a couple of years before he passed away."

Critics Andrew Druckenbrod and Scott Mervis talk about music on "The Beat," available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.