Communication is the essential medium of a creative culture: the communal sea in which we all swim. A company that can't communicate is like a jazz band without instruments: Music just isn't going to happen.

You are able to monitor and police your standards of quality once you have defined them.

Jamming - which follows rules but not individual notes - gives you a different result each time, depending upon the players and the conditions in which they find themselves. It is adaptable to changing conditions.

You would not let your kids do whatever they want. So the challenge is to create accountability in a non-mechanistic way. You cannot come in with a clipboard and check off boxes and figure out why something has not been done on schedule.

A large part of the impresario's job has to do with maintaining and communicating standards of performance. Knowing how to set those standards - which are often more subjective than analytical - means knowing how to communicate the difference between something that is great and something that is just O.K.

Performers may play in the studio, but they need to go out and tour every once in a while to keep their edge, or a performer who is a stranger may be asked to "sit in" on a set.

The imagination is like a muscle: it strengthens through use.