Although it is very difficult to define Jazz as a whole, one definition that partially clarifies its content is that it is a music in which the musician performs melodic variations on a given harmonic basis in dialogue with the rhythmic pulse.
An important jazz composer and pianist, Thelonious Monk (1917-1982) had said:
“Jazz is Freedom”.
And indeed, the increased degree of improvisation that encompasses this genre in every component of music (Melody, Harmony, Rhythm) confirms this basic framework of Jazz music. If we add to the above characteristics that, the objective goal of every jazz musician is to release the musical ideas that he has in his mind and to play them on his musical instrument or to sing them, then this expression of Telonius Monk becomes even more specific.
The jazz musician exercises painfully on well-known components of music, common to every musical genre such as Scales, Chords, Melody, Rhythm, Harmony, so that the melodies he listens with his mind to direct his fingers, in a truly personal expression, in a dialogue with himself, the musicians who accompany him and with the audience.