Day 1 Our collaboration kicked off to a great start with our mentors. Oddly, we had not too much scheduled with them throughout the week. But both of them seemed happy to share their experience with early jazz music. I myself was in for a surprise. Both Giacomo and Peter view jazz as one gigantic, continuous thing; like one of my good friends likes to say, “it’s all jazz; it’s all music.” Peter made a fantastic distinction between “contemporary” and “modern” jazz. The former is the jazz music that is happening right now; the kinds of sounds that most people (in their respective circles of today’s jazz music) are making. The latter is relevant to anything being made that is contemporary. For example, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie’s work is still relevant today in that it informs the basis for today’s jazz language and vocabulary that jazz musicians study. This stance spoke to Peter and G...