school benches

Settled In Shipping describes his education.

Bebop, swing, and the blues are either the Holy Trinity, or dusty relics that are relegated to their time in history.

A sad state affairs, and one that doesn't correspond to the reality of progressive jazz of any era: Steve Coleman, Jason Moran, Greg Osby (his latest CD, Channel Three, is quite good), Mal Waldron, Steve Lacy, Andrew Hill, Monk (although, there is that "we changed all that" quote)...

SiS also points to the way out: personal initiative.

I was fortunate enough to have Jeff as a teacher and mentor, and we often talked about avant-garde/free music; I got a balanced education that way.

Luckily, I got involved with CKUT my second year of university, and their library houses a whole world of improvised music not much discussed in the faculty

I think that this applies to any education: your teachers aren't going to spoon-feed you everything (no matter how much you pay), either because of personal bias or cirricular strictures.

Also, I hadn't realised David was so young!