Like most ground-breaking art forms, contemporary creative music is rarely understood or accepted in its own time, and for those reasons, can largely go unheard. Music and the Creative Spirit: Innovators in Jazz, Improvisation, and the Avant Garde aims to give today's brightest music innovators due recognition and respect, celebrating their work and creativity. Through personal interviews, artists such as Pat Metheny, Regina Carter, Joshua Redman, Fred Anderson, Dave Holland, Bill Frisell, David Murray, and John Zorn—to name just a few—offer clear, frank discussions about music, creativity, work, society, culture, current events, and more.

Author Lloyd Peterson has hand picked these artists specifically for their ability to express themselves through their own creative voices and transcend their art form through the strength of their own ingenious spirit. Their music eschews categorization, genre, or style, and the book necessarily takes a broader view of jazz, tapping into the inventive aspect that is difficult to describe or teach, and is rarely discussed. By allowing the innovators an opportunity to speak for themselves, readers are afforded a clearer sense of their attitudes and approaches, their ways of working, and their views of contemporary music and society.