Towards the end of last year, I went to see Chick Corea’s trio gig at the Barbican with Stanley Clarke and Lenny White - all of whom I have admired for years. As you would expect, they were accomplished, inventive and virtuosic. Yet for all that, for me, it lacked something. As I remarked to a friend, These guys can do anything, and because they can, they do…

I wonder if it is sufficiently considered that the production of art requires constraints. Bix Beiderbecke had faulty technique; Roy Haynes does not hold clinics because he does some things the ‘wrong’ way; Ornette Coleman could not play in all the keys. Constraints can force innovation…

And discrimination. Philip Larkin - the great poet, and not-so-great jazz critic - drew attention to this in his criticism of John Coltrane, likening his method to one of those flick-books of a running dog which showed every possible position of the dog’s legs. Surely, the job of the artist was to select one? In Coltrane’s case, the criticism is surely unjust because, at the point in question, the exposition of every possible combination of notes exactly was Coltrane’s art.

That said, it remains the job of the artist to discriminate and present the audience with the result. Choice, which would seem always desirable, in terms of technique, stamina, theoretical knowledge and musical context might, I suggest, become inimical to art. We have just lived through a period of the greatest consumer choice probably in history. Music has reflected life, with greater opportunities for the jazz musician to train and professionalise, with higher quality ensembles, with a greater choice of instruments, effects and technology than at any previous time. Yet for all this, many people feel that the last thirty years has not been a fertile period for jazz.

Jazz emerged in an environment of scarcity, played on army-surplus instruments in a non-academic setting. If you want proof of how technical constraints can force a creative mind to achieve a novel conception of beauty, listen to the early Miles Davis. Even the celebrated cutting sessions of the forties and fifties between technical giants were also contests of lyrical beauty. I do not disparage virtuosity, or even the very wide choice of cymbals available today. Nor do I propose the emergence of some kind of naïve jazz - though that could happen. I simply suggest that all this choice has not produced a corresponding surge of creativity. Limitations can also be a resource…