Broadway chops

THE Jazz Police strike again! Don Heckman had to issue a ticket to Lea DeLaria because she had the audacity to have come from the Broadway stage on her path to jazz (“DeLaria’s Dabbling Is Surface Stuff,� May 3). This narrow but all-too-common vision in conservative jazz circles prevented him from seeing how Lea’s Broadway chops only aided and abetted her totally sensational jazz singing.

Instead of burying her influences, she used them to take current Broadway repertoire and recast it in new and exciting ways. Her sublime reading on “With Every Breath You Take� from “City of Angels� and the boppish “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd� were nothing short of revelatory.

Brett Fox

North Hollywood