an excellent article discussing the nature of improvisation in jazz:
For too long, we’ve mistaken the speed and spontaneity of basketball and jazz as evidence that these forms of entertainment are simple and facile, somehow less complicated than football or Wagner. But nothing could be further from the truth. It doesn’t matter if we’re watching Blake Griffin execute a dunk or listening to the modal melodies of Kind of Blue – these improvised creations only exist because their creators have internalized the necessary set of patterns, training their brain to execute astonishingly difficult calculations in the blink of an eye. As a result, they’re able to see what we cannot, envisioning rebounds and passing lanes and melodies that the rest of us can’t even comprehend. We take these performers for granted because they make it look so easy. But it only looks easy because they’ve worked so hard.
