One of the things I love about jazz is how you can get a group of players together who may have never met before, and make music. There is a universality to the language. I have experienced this often, in combos, jam sessions, and gigs of all varieties. Players of various experience and proficiency will play tunes with the goals of making the group sound good, and improvising on the changes. Improvisation is also a key component. We learn to improvise as we learned to speak, the notes on our instruments turn into phrases, become longer and more complex over time. Our phrases become sentences, then paragraphs, conversations within a song. We strive to become fluent in our genre, admiring the masters who created jazz, while seeking to find our own voice. It still fascinates me.