…from the fascinating complete transcript of an interview with Henry Threadgill at The Wire’s website:

real creativity needs to occur not by playing something that you been playing over and over again and playing some variation of it, but to create something in the moment, right in the moment. That’s creative improvisation. To be able to approach a musical terrain and you’ve got all these solutions for it, I don’t consider that creative at this point. In retrospect, when I go back and listen to older music, it was fresh at one time, for the players that played it when they first encountered that music, you know, like Dizzy Gillespie. But now, institutions, universities, colleges and music schools have all come up with solutions that’s been taught to all of the players out here, and they all have a way of approaching stuff. I don’t consider that creative at all. See, the way that Johnny Griffin came at a piece, as opposed to the way Paul Gonsalves came at a piece as opposed to the way that Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis came at a piece, the same piece of music, you couldn’t even compare. There was nothing similar. Or Don Byas, or anyone else. But now everything has been studied, catalogued, and made a methodology. It’s a methodology now that’s taught, and players learn these methodologies, and they’re playing methodologies more than they’re playing ideas.