Creative Specialists: Exploring Creativity, Improvisation, and Jazz in Music Education

This qualitative case study explored the process of musical creativity in musicians who are educators and improvisers specifically. Creativity takes on many forms; however, improvisational creativity has subjective-uniqueness that is valuable to many research areas, such as education, psychology, sports science, and leadership. The following research questions guided the study: Q1 How do professional improvising music educators define creativity? Q2 How does the creative process manifest itself within their performance and teaching? Through purposeful sampling, four participants were selected and interviewed to collectively create 7-8 hours of narrative data producing 200 pages of data. Participants as creative specialists were selected based on availability, convenience, and if creativity, as an improvising musician and music educator, was their primary source of income. Findings from the data generated the following themes. • The use of metaphors defining creativity • The use of metaphors in teaching creativity • The mental state of flow/zone.