Susan Watts in Chestnut Hill

On this occasion, Susan decided to demonstrate her ample jazz chops with the accompaniment of the Jazz Doctors, a trio that derives its name from the fact that all three members have either an MD or a PhD. The set list covered standards from the Great American Songbook, Yiddish classics, and jazz favorites, to all of which Susan brought a light mezzo-soprano voice or her Yiddishkeit-imbued trumpet.

“Centerpiece,” a blues tune by the late ex-Basie and Hollywood session trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison, served as Susan’s vocal bow to the scat trio of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross (Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross are still active at the respective ages of 93 and 84). She made a brief trip to Brazil through Luiz Bonfá’s “Manhã de Carnaval” (“Carnival Morning”) from the 1959 film Black Orpheus. The second set brought a hefty dose of Duke Ellington with “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)," "I’m Beginning to See the Light,” and “Caravan” featuring just the trio with the spotlight on drummer Singer, who displayed a powerful Art Blakey influence.

Turning to her Yiddish roots, Susan sang “Liebeshmerzen” (“Love Pangs”) as a jazz waltz, then invited her mother to the drum set for “Autumn Leaves” (on which Elaine emulated the late Gene Krupa) and “Hava Nagila” (the Jewish counterpart to “When the Saints Go Marching In”). Susan displayed her trumpet virtuosity à la Atlantic City native Ziggy Elman (nee Harry Finkelman), from whom the young Harry James learned Jewish trumpet technique while both were colleagues in the Benny Goodman band circa 1936.

For the classic “Bei Mir Bist du Schoen” (adapted from a Yiddish folk melody by Sholom Secunda with English lyrics by the young Sammy Cahn), Susan drew upon the 20-year-old Ella Fitzgerald, although the Andrews Sisters scored a #1 hit with it in 1938. Most impressive among her Yiddishkeit repertoire, however, was Susan’s medley from Fiddler on the Roof, which seamlessly wedded her trumpet with “If I Were a Rich Man” and “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” all with solid jazz support from the trio.

Last but not least, Susan delved into the Great American Songbook with sensitive interpretations of works by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (“I Could Write a Book”), George and Ira Gershwin (“Someone to Watch Over Me”), Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II (“All the Things You Are”), and Harry Warren and Mack Gordon (“There Will Never Be Another You”). The evening was brought to a stellar close by Miles Davis’s “Four.”

Klezmer, which is derived from the Hebrew word for “instrument of song,” refers not only to the Eastern European Jewish music idiom itself but also to the musicians who specialize in its performance. Susan Watts is certainly one of its foremost practitioners, now boldly expanding into klezmer’s distant cousin jazz, which shares many of klezmer’s defining attributes.