There are two things wrong with jazz…
Funny as I wasn’t a jazz guy really until later in life and my tastes have morphed over the last 15 years significantly. Still can’t get into that smooth jazz stuff but some of my most beloved music is in the big jazz pool.
Don’t forget how there are no missed notes, there is just “going chromatic”, and also the internet’s obsession with modes, to the point I have seen something in Minor Pentatonic described as “Dorian”.
You could make a similar argument about “metal” and not be wrong 
I sometimes wonder if there are actually more metal sub genres than bands… 
yeah but you can pretty much identify all of them as metal. if nobody had ever heard girl from ipanema and any song by weather report, it would be hard to explain they are both jazz.
“it’s like they’re playing the wrong notes”
nigel tufnal
If you turn that around, you could ask: then why have sub-categories at all??
It’s all good of course. It’s all music, and it’s us humans who have a need to use labels and boxes to make something organic into a more “structured”, manageable entity.
I am a big fan of subgenres. Not because I want to pigeonhole music - bands usually belong to several and sometimes many subgenres. But more because it provides a fast framework for being able to vocalize what you are looking for or digging.
This is one place @T_dub and I respectfully disagreed, and discussed a lot, as Toby was wont to do (as am I, miss the guy.) he felt pretty strongly that Punk was Punk, Rock was Rock, etc etc. I can respect that.
But at the same time, post-punk, while still arguably punk, sounds nothing like hardcore punk, or like post-hardcore. I think is is useful to have these distinctions to describe things, even if a band fits in to several (i.e. Hüsker Dü or Minutemen, both of whom are at times all three of these things - pioneers of hardcore punk, occasional post-punk, and recognized widely as the first two post-hardcore bands. Same for Descendents, not the same for Adolescents or Black Flag, TSOL was hardcore punk and skank rock, etc) The different terms are still useful, even for describing variations in a band’s own output over time.
Jazz, at its core, is and has always been an expression of musical mastery through innovation and improvisation. Its various sub-genres create arrangements of standards, popular songs, and original compositions in unique and playful ways.
Just as master painters throughout history have combined, blended and juxtaposed various pigments in distinctly different ways to express their world and time, master jazz musicians “paint” with tones, rhythms, instruments, and compositions built on a higher order of music theory.
From relatively simple melodic forms to the avant garde and esoteric (“chromatic”, “wrong notes”), jazz is art.
What it isn’t now, nor ever has been, is for everyone. But for those who love jazz - in all its forms - it strikes a primal chord with vitality and originality that speaks to those listeners like no other music form can.
A celebration and sharing of jazz is the purpose of this thread. Respectfully, please post jazz songs and artists to share. And, many thanks to all who have.
Dizzy Gillespie. A great jazz pioneer.
Brilliant! 
I’ve not listened to Oscar Peterson for years. Bad mistake and get a load of the bassist; this is why I want to be able to play improvised walking bass lines. Just beautiful!
Oscar is a quintessential jazz master.
What he and his band do with a simple blues progression is artful, pure and certainly not simple.
Yes it shows admirably what can be done with just a bass, drums and piano and all acoustic - no fancy effects - such a slick, full sound.
I’d forgotten how you could always just hear Peterson vocalising as he played.
Class act!
Bill Evans. Master of taste and style.
my go to modern jazz pianist at the moment is Hiromi. Awsome talent and just seems to enjoy herself at least as much as her audiences!
This includes her fairly famous reinvention of Pachelbel’s Canon starting around the 36 minute mark.
Punch Brothers. Instrumentally, they are a contemporary newgrass band, but spiritually they are adherents of the jazz tradition of excellent musicianship and inventive use of improvisation, arrangement and dynamics.
This is but one example.
