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Is improvisational jazz to impressionism art as smooth jazz is to realism art?

So, I’ll acknowledge up front, I’m an engineer. Civilian and Warfighter lives can be in the balance depending on whether our company products perform as required or not. As a result, I try very hard to drive the entropic world we live in towards black and white as much as possible. I need to put order to chaos. When i look at art, impressionistic art requires a lot of mental work to make sense of. I just don't see it or get it, appreciate it or like it. I also find, as hard as i may try to enjoy improvisational jazz, that i don't get it, appreciate it, or like it. Instead, I love Realism art and instrumental smooth jazz!!
Reading from Audiogon forum pages for a couple of years now, i feel like i should feel inferior because 1. I don’t appreciate the free flow of expression that is improvisational jazz and 2. I love that there is a tune and thread in smooth jazz. I love the guitar artistry of Chuck Loeb, Chris Standring, and Acoustic Alchemy; the trumpet expressions of Rick Braun, Cindy Bradley, and Chris Botti; and the bass works of Brian Bromberg. 
I’m curious if there are many others out there that equate order (or lack there-of) in their music tastes to that of their taste in the visual arts?
Also, are there many other music lovers who would rather enjoy a good smooth jazz listening session than improvisational jazz?  If so, who do you listen to?
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Showing 4 responses by mijostyn

mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
The great thing about music is everyone can enjoy it in their own way and you are free to sample it all. The curious mind can go rampaging through centuries of material and place themselves in any time zone just like old photographs. It is not an issue to argue about, like art there are an infinite number of ways to interpret it.
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
@stuartk :-)
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
@stuartk , In 1969 John Mclaughlin did an album on Polydor called Extrapolation. It is the most conservative recording I have heard from him. I believe it was done before he left Britain. He bent fusion with Devotion and my goals beyond becoming Mahavishnu somewhere in here. The rest you probably know. 
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
"A man's got to know his limits." 

I do not equate visual art and music.
I am far from an art expert. I either like it or I do not and I have never paid enough attention to it to make sense out of it. 

I make furniture. Humans use furniture for specific purposes. In order to be useful furniture has to accommodate human dimensions. A chair seat has to have a certain height. Same for tables. Furniture has to be made within a set of rules which is what makes it challenging. You want to be original but you have to do it within rules. What good is a nice looking chair you can't sit in? Music is exactly the same or you are playing tennis without a net. I enjoy challenging music like Henry Threadgill's To Much Sugar For a Dime or Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch. But, there is a limit to western ears. The late John Coltrane work like Ascension leave me cold. There is nothing I can hum or tap my foot to, just a succession of dissonant notes and pace-less rhythms. 

If you want to see/hear a mind that produced both visual art and Music
google Don Van Vliet. 
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