Jazz. A word that can have so many meanings, to so many different people, it may be worse than useless. I don't like calling myself a jazz musician, for all the preconceived ideas and bias surrounding it. But there is no short version, at least for me.
Here's what I am:
I am a musician. Most of the time I am improvising on tunes at the piano. With some exception, these tunes are in the classic jazz/pop standard and show tunes book. Sometimes I will play hymns, or themes from classical pieces, and sometimes a more contemporary song that I happen to know. Sometimes I improvise freely, but usually not in public (though I have released some of these on a CD). I play to express the depths of my feeling, not my knowledge. At this stage, I find it more important to connect with my deeper feelings and intuitive places than to prioritize concerning myself with the biggest vocabulary words. I am not opposed to that, but rather to the idea that performance should be evaluated on the number of big words that can be used in a sentence. I play for people in the room, while surrendering myself to where I am led to go.
Like I said, no short version.
I guess it's still jazz.
Ugh.