What are the ingredients that coalesce into the enlivened art form of jazz? What keeps it from sounding like a traffic jam? Musicians improvise with and against each other, individually yet cohesively. They play with form, melody, harmony and rhythm. Each musician's excellence provokes brilliance in the other. Listeners, suspended in sound and space, delight in the unexpected and take comfort in the familiar. When it works, it is restorative, even transcendent, with moments of frisson akin to catching lightning in a bottle. Odean Pope, a legend of cutting-edge jazz composition and saxophone, will perform with his trio. The performance will be followed by an interdisciplinary discussion. Panelists will bring diverse perspectives to the creative process, from its inception and growth in the individual musician to its expression and reciprocal effect on the listener/performer. The creative process is fostered by its presentation to wider audiences and its preservation for continuity.

Deena Adler is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice. She has held numerous executive positions in professional organizations. A member of the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, Dr. Adler served as Director of the Psychotherapy Training Program for several years and won teaching awards both locally and nationally. She combined her love of jazz and applied psychoanalysis in becoming the authorized representative of jazz great, Odean Pope. This collaboration led her to become executive producer of the upcoming CD, Odean's List, as well as to pursue her interest in understanding the creative process involved in jazz.

Billy Banks is Principal Owner and Director of Banks Entertainment, a management consulting and production services company that he formed in 2001. The company's current list of clients includes Wynton Marsalis Enterprises, Jazz at Lincoln Center Productions, and the New York City Parks Foundation Summer Concerts in the Parks. He has worked in the entertainment industry for more than 30 years as radio producer/on-air host; music business management consultant; concert/tour producer and record producer. He has worked closely with trumpeter/band leader Wynton Marsalis since 1982, and was Director of Production and Touring Operations for Jazz at Lincoln Center from 1994-2001. In addition to producing recordings for numerous recording artists, he has produced profiles for National Public Radio on the life and music of John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Muddy Waters, and Bob Marley.

Craig McIver is a percussionist and regular member of of Odean Pope's trio. He received his musical education at The New School of Music and the University of Miami. He has been mentored by and performed with some of the jazz greats, including Joe Henderson, Ben Schacter, Michael Brecker, Kenny Barron, Shirley Scott, Barry Harris, Al Grey, Freddie Hubbard, Clark Terry, Dizzy Gillespie, Slide Hampton, and Bobby Watson. He toured with Max Roach for twelve years and tours currently with Bobby Zankel, Tyrone Brown, Bootsie Barnes. McIver teaches at the Settlement Music School, the Kimmel Center, and the Merck Arts Education Center. He won the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship in music/jazz in 2003.

Odean Pope, Philadelphia's Founding Father of jazz saxophone, received his Certificate in Orchestration, Modern Harmony, African Rhythms, Be-Bop Art Forms, and Arranging from the Paris Conservatory of Music. When jazz cohorts such as John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones, and Hank Jones left for New York, Pope remained in his home base of Philadelphia to concentrate on finding his own musical voice. His concurrent life of international touring includes over two decades as a member of the Max Roach Quartet, winning Best Tenor Saxophone Player at the North Sea jazz Festival. Mr. Pope's 2006 CD, Locked & Loaded, won wide acclaim, while his upcoming CD, Odean's List, was recorded at Jazz at Lincoln Center with some of the greatest musical minds in the jazz world today. Mr. Pope performs with his trio, quartet, and a saxophone choir consisting of nine saxophones. He has won numerous citations and awards, including the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation and Chamber Music America.

Loren Schoenberg is a tenor saxophonist and writer on jazz who has won a Grammy Award for Best Album Notes. He is Executive Director of The Jazz Museum in Harlem. Acclaim for the Loren Schoenberg Big Band has resulted in successful albums, musical collaborations, and a radio jazz program on WKCR. He was also co-host of Jazz from the Archives on WGBO, run by the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. He was an assistant, personal manager, and archivist to Benny Goodman. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Lester Young Reader, The Oxford Companion to Jazz, and Masters of the Jazz Saxophone. In 2002, Mr. Schoenberg's book, The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to Jazz, was published with an introduction by Wynton Marsalis. Mr. Schoenberg is on the faculty of Julliard's Institute for Jazz Studies and Jazz at Lincoln Center's Jazz 101 series. He has taught at the New School, the Manhattan School of Music, William Patterson University, SUNY/Purchase, the Essentially Ellington Band Director's Academy in Snowmass, Colorado, The Julliard Evening School, and Long island University. He has given lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Philharmonic, and is Program Director of the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Jazz Colony summer program.

Lee Smith studied trumpet from 5th grade through his freshman year at West Chester University, but his bass guitar took precedence when, in high school, he began to learn songs by ear from the radio. He has toured internationally with several Philadelphia based recording artists, including The Delphonics, Blue Magic, and Billy Paul. He moved to New York to work with Afro-Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaria for five years. For over twenty five years, Mr. Smith has worked with numerous jazz greats, including Cab Calloway, Lionel Hampton, Erskine Hawkins, Benny Golson, Bud Shank, Dizzy Gillespie, Cedar Walton, Donald Harrison, Raason Roland Kirk, Greg Osby, Sonny Fortune and Odean Pope. He is also the proud father of bass great, Christian McBride.

Myles Weinstein is a drummer and percussionist who has led two different professional lives—one as a performing artist and the other as an agent to many of today's finest jazz artists. In 2001, Mr. Weinstein founded his own booking agency, Unlimited Myles, Inc., exclusively representing multi-award-winning artists, such as Regina Carter (MacArthur "Genius Award"), Miguel Zenon (MacArthur "Genius Award"), Kenny Barron (Grammy nominee), Stefon Harris (Grammy nominee), Jane Monheit, Billy Childs (Grammy winner), Luciana Souza (Grammy winner), Vijay Iyer and Russell Malone. Previously, Mr. Weinstein established and served as director of the jazz division at Herbert Barrett Management, where he worked from 1993-2001. As a performing artist, Mr. Weinstein has played percussion, timpani and drums with a diverse list of artists and orchestras, including Stefon Harris, Steve Turre, the Long Island Philharmonic and the Joffrey Ballet Orchestra. With Stefon Harris he toured and recorded the Grammy-nominated work The Grand Unification Theory. With Chris Potter he led the group, The Jazz Mentality, which toured throughout the U.S. and recorded two CDs, Maxwell's Torment and Show Business Is My Life, both of which reached the top of the jazz radio charts. Since 2004, Myles has served on the board of directors for the North American Performing Arts Managers and Agents.