She did and she didn’t. She had the skills and talent but she had to learn the rules. The esteemed trumpeter Roy Hargrove took her under his wing. He explained her place in the jam format, the order of solo spots. After the all the horn players but before the drummer — that’s where she could have her brief say.

“That really helped me find my way in,” Ms. Lerman said. “And of course having someone like Roy be my shepherd helped, too. He made a space for me.”

“People starting seeing me as a musician and listening to me,” she continued, “because I was fitting in the right place.” After a while, she got her own jam session, at Small’s jazz club in Greenwich Village. But the turning point was attending late-night sessions at Dizzy’s Club, uptown at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Michael Mwenso, the host, kept inviting her onstage — because, he recalled, “there weren’t many like her, a female tap dancer who can hear the music like that.” Mr. Mwenso also had a hand in programming, and as he learned “how deep her musical understanding was,” he began booking her projects for the club.

After that, the world just opened up for her. “I couldn’t do enough gigs with people,” she said. “They were writing tunes and musical arrangements for me. They were including tap in their thing. It wasn’t even a thought in their mind that it didn’t belong.”