It takes three people to make music properly, one man to write it, another to play it, and a third to criticize it. Anything else is just a rehearsal.
“Improvisation is really the deepest way to deal with moment-by-moment reality in music. There is no deeper way, personally deeper. But there is no less depth in working with someone else’s music — having found his depth becomes exactly the same. And the people who think the two things are different are going to lose out when they come to listen to one or the other.”
Keith Jarrett