Jazz and Business: A Mastery Quest

Last week, Jewel and I facilitated a full-day Jazz Leadership Project workshop for a group of CEOs in upstate New York. We were joined by the JLP Trio—Zaccai Curtis, piano; Jonathan Michel, bass; and McClenty Hunter, drums. Using music as a medium of insight, we bridged the world of work and business to the creativity and excellence of the jazz idiom.

Our primary focus was the stages of what we’ve deemed a “Mastery Quest.”

A mastery quest is a developmental progression of ever-increasing skill, knowledge, and flow from beginner to intermediate to advanced. We began by asking the CEOs to name examples of master leaders in business and organizational life. Warren Buffett, Joe Montana, and Diane Furstenberg were among those mentioned. Then, our band members gave the name of a master on their instruments and explained why.

Upon this foundation, we delved deeply into each stage, with the musicians demonstrating basics such as major, minor, diminished, and whole-tone scales on the piano and rudimental drum patterns at the Apprentice stage. Stepping up to the Journeyman level, Zaccai and Jonathan played the standard ii – v- i pattern as chords and scale patterns. The band played John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” uptempo to demonstrate Mastery after explaining the complex chord progressions and key changes that make the song challenging to improvise on.  

We instructed the CEOs to identify managers and executives in their companies at the various stages. They were also tasked with pinpointing areas in which they themselves could advance. Two of the most significant integrations occurred during a Q&A following the musical demonstrations.

McClenty leaned on his experience as a long-time teacher and dean in a charter middle school in the Bronx. When he emphasized that there are levels within each level and that one must master being an apprentice and master being a journeyman, the a ha’s swept through the room. When Jonathan demonstrated how, on “Giant Steps,” he could navigate the form by playing slower patterns, such as two notes per measure rather than four, several executives mentioned that they realized a need to slow down even in the fast-paced world they live in.

Mastery has been a theme from the start of our newsletter. Here’s an excerpt from a post in 2020 titled “Mastery: The Fierce Urgency of Now.”:

The Journey of Mastery

Mastery is a journey, not a destination; a journey is filled with failure and disappointments, with what, in jazz, we call the blues. Mastery ain’t easy. What, in a fulfilling life that fills us with a full sense of satisfaction and real accomplishment, is easy? As Jewel recently wrote, authentic leadership involves high-performance and high-fulfillment.

Mastery can be viewed from several angles. Back in medieval days, the mastery development model was a beginner, called an apprentice, studying with a master craftsman, growing in knowledge and skills to the intermediate stage, called the journeyman phase, and ultimately ascending to that advanced place of flowing skill and elegant excellence deemed the status of a master craftsman. 

When the individual soloist came to prominence in jazz via Louis Armstrong, the apprentice model held sway. Armstrong apprenticed with Joe “King” Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and traveled to New York to play in Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra—the greatest early big band in the idiom. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker apprenticed in swing orchestras and big bands before launching their bebop revolution. John Coltrane performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis before leading his pathbreaking bands as a grandmaster.

Today, in music and business, we’re more likely to point to mentors as guiding others toward growth, development, and mastery. That’s good, especially since mentors link directly to the hero archetype we favor, but let’s stay with master craftsman a bit longer.

Master Craftsman and Improvisation

In his classic 1973 work, The Hero and the Blues, Albert Murray said that “the master craftsman in any trade is . . . one who knows the tread . . . the tracks which make the course or the way, the route and the routine, the way to and the way to do.” The master craftsman can “execute the most intricate steps in an outstanding manner.” 

Murray extends his point further by saying that not only does the expertise of the master craftsman qualify him or her to function on their own, but that they can “extemporize under pressure and in the most complicated circumstances.” 

Such a stage of mastery means that the main issue is no longer simply skill level or quantity of knowledge.

Improvisation, after all, is the ultimate skill. The master craftsman is one for whom knowledge and technique have become that with which he not only performs but also plays . . . The master craftsman is also one who, as the hero in combat and the blues musician in a jam session, can maintain the dancer’s grace under the pressure of all tempos.   

—Albert Murray

Let’s ask ourselves: can I maintain a dancer’s grace under the pressure of all tempos?