Jazz improvisation is an important aspect of jazz. Basically, improvisation is composing on the spot and coming up with melodies off the top of one's head. Traditionally, jazz improvisation was distinguished from other forms of music improvisation by its chordal complexity, often exhibiting ii V progressions in multiple keys. However, since the release of Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, jazz improvisation has also come to be associated with modal harmony and improvisation over static key centers. The connotation of jazz improvisation changed again with the emergence of the late period work of John Coltrane, which featured jazz improvisations that are atonal, formless, and avant garde. There are several techniques that jazz improvisers utilize, many of which apply to multiple types of jazz:
Read more about Jazz Improvisation: Modes, Targeting, "Flat 9" Theory, Pentatonics, Cells and Lines, Phrasing
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“The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always greater than its performance—Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, for instance, is always greater than its performance—whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being performed.”
—André Previn (b. 1929)