What was once a highly specialized, narrowly focused vehicle has been steadily morphing into a very different kind of vehicle, aimed at a wildly different audience, with diametrically different driving demands.
Fully appreciating this music requires the high pitch of concentration usually found in a concert hall (eating stuffed cabbage while the band plays would be like juggling and riding a bicycle at the same time), and yet it also demands the kind of intimate connection between musician and audience that's only possible in a nightclub like Birdland.