At a time when hard ques­tions are being asked about its intrin­sic worth, Con­nie Crothers gives jazz edu­ca­tion a good name. She’s been at it as long as I can remem­ber, and prob­a­bly for some time before that. She’s a player who teaches and a teacher who plays, and she does both so man­i­festly well as to make the order of pri­or­ity irrelevant.

Con­nie doesn’t have a sinecure at some uni­ver­sity, but instead teaches out of her Brook­lyn loft. As dis­tinc­tive a pianist as she is, she doesn’t turn out lit­tle car­bon copies of her­self, or a skein of idiomatic-correct rules-followers. Rather, she men­tors gen­uinely cre­ative artists and helps them to best express them­selves in myr­iad ways. Indeed, Connie’s ped­a­gogy doesn’t pro­duce dis­ci­ples so much as peers – and in many cases, cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tors. You’d be hard-pressed to find one of her stu­dents who doesn’t describe her in the most glow­ing terms.

Con­nie was invited to curate The Stone in New York for the sec­ond half of Sep­tem­ber. She used the oppor­tu­nity to show­case not only her own con­sid­er­able artistry, but also that of some of her gifted stu­dents, past and present. They include clar­inetist Bill Payne, with whom Con­nie recently recorded a beau­ti­ful album of free impro­vi­sa­tions; alto sax­o­phon­ist Richard Tab­nik, who’s been ply­ing his idio­syn­cratic lyri­cism around New York for years (to a great deal less acclaim than he deserves); sax­o­phon­ist Nick Lyons, a young impro­vis­ing alto sax­o­phon­ist of great promise; and many more. I can’t make many of the hits, liv­ing as I do a good 60 miles from the near­est sub­way sta­tion. How­ever, I was able to make it into the city this past Sun­day to catch two sets — the first a solo con­cert by pianist Carol Liebowitz, the sec­ond fea­tur­ing Trance­For­ma­tion, a trio com­pris­ing Con­nie on piano, her for­mer stu­dent Andrea Wolper on vocals, and  Ken Fil­iano on bass.

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I didn’t think to ask Carol Liebowitz whether she’s stud­ied with Con­nie, but I assume she has. Liebowitz cer­tainly exhibits the kind of free-thinking indi­vid­u­al­ity Con­nie seems to fos­ter in all her stu­dents – in other words, she doesn’t sound much like any­one but her­self. Her set con­sisted of a dozen-or-so short, freely impro­vised vignettes. She took care to con­trast each move­ment from the one before it, fol­low­ing loud with soft, busy with laconic. She made good use of par­al­lel har­monies; most of her play­ing was chordal, mak­ing her infre­quent use of sin­gle lines all the more strik­ing. Liebowitz’s con­so­nances were touched with dis­so­nance, and her dis­so­nances pos­sessed the clar­ity of a major triad. The indi­vid­ual pieces, as well as the con­cert itself, were mod­els of con­ci­sion. After each, Liebowitz would look up shyly, as if to cue the capac­ity audi­ence that she had fin­ished, though there was sel­dom any doubt, so well-constructed were her improvisations.

Know­ing Ken and Con­nie (and by rep­u­ta­tion, Andrea) as I do, the night’s sec­ond set could have con­sisted of prac­ti­cally any­thing. Although they’re adept at every aspect of jazz per­for­mance – “From Rag­time to No Time” (to quote the title of an album by the late Beaver Harris) – when left to their own devices they tend not to com­part­men­tal­ize, but rather treat jazz as a seam­less con­tin­uum wherein any­thing is pos­si­ble. This night, they dwelt mostly on the outer fringe, a place where con­ven­tion is politely asked to sit down and shut the hell up.

Like Liebowitz before them, the trio impro­vised freely, although they divided their per­for­mance into fewer and longer episodes. The three musi­cians both ful­filled and sub­verted expected roles. Wolper played the melodic lead, but was as often inclined to evanesce, her non-verbal vocals grace­fully merg­ing with the whole, espe­cially Filiano’s bass. Given the human voice’s unlim­ited capac­ity to make strange sounds, the temp­ta­tion exists for a vocal impro­viser to indulge his or her most out­ra­geous urges. I’ve heard some do just that, and it’s sel­dom pretty. Wolper resists the impulse. She incor­po­rates such tech­niques as glos­so­lalia and melisma spar­ingly and effec­tively. She’s not a bit afraid to play it straight and sim­ple. Nei­ther is Fil­iano. Although a pro­foundly intense impro­viser and prodi­giously gifted bassist, he’s in such com­plete con­trol of his resources as to let the music flow nat­u­rally. When it’s time to play the bassist’s cus­tom­ary role, he plays it. When it’s time to take the melodic lead, he takes it. When it’s time to act the per­cus­sion­ist, he acts it. Crothers – a world-class pianist of remark­able skill and imag­i­na­tion and appar­ently lit­tle, if any, ego – is just as sen­si­tive to the music’s needs. Her touch varies from hard as nails to smooth as but­ter. Her energy is as lim­it­less as her imag­i­na­tion, her com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing in the moment com­plete. Com­bined, the trio cre­ated music that veered from lean min­i­mal­ism to extreme max­i­mal­ism, from 20th-century “new music” strate­gies to the unruli­est free jazz. Like all the best impro­vised music, the per­for­mance was end­lessly var­ied and supremely, joy­ously evoca­tive of its sin­gu­lar time and place.

It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to hear Con­nie Crothers in a con­text such as this, know­ing that she’s also as fine and as dis­tinc­tive a straight-ahead jazz pianist as you’ll ever find. Her art lit­er­ally knows no bound­aries. That she shares that open­ness so freely with such a wide range of tal­ented stu­dents gives me hope for the future of jazz edu­ca­tion – not in the insti­tu­tional sense, but in the person-to-person, wisdom-handed-down-from-one-generation-to-the-next sense. That’s where the most effec­tive jazz teach­ing has always been done, and, I sus­pect, where it will con­tinue to be done, long after over­priced uni­ver­sity jazz pro­grams run out of teenagers to fleece. On a day when the 2009 MacArthur Grants were announced with­out the inclu­sion of a jazz musi­cian, I’m think­ing, for 2010, the selec­tion of Con­nie Crothers would be a great way for the Foun­da­tion to get back into the groove.