Jazz for aficionados

Frogman , serious question .
I’ve listened to your link to Kenny D Jr 6 times , partly for the sheer beauty of it and partly trying to see how he does those chords .
But most of all because the way these 3 play together is meta-physical , almost seems impossible to do .
Is this more from sheer shed time or because these guys have perfected the art of listening to each other, just know each other inside out , all of the above ?
One a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate this trio on improv to the extent its playing off the others ?
Assuming they are .

Amen, O-10 and Ghosthouse .
One of the very first  jazz LP's I ever bought was a Wes Montgomery.
Alerted me to the fact jazz is serious music .

Nice fantasy, O-10 and thanks for sharing.  We all have them, but I'm not quite ready to post mine 😉.  Man, saxophone music by the campfire in the Sahara!  That is one hip caravan!  

A little less hip:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5414InafIUk

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yZSTMOcRqPY

Schubert, great question. The answer is, not surprisingly I’m sure, "all of the above". That level of musical intuition is a combination of innate ability ("great ears") and musical maturity gained by learning the importance of knowing when to support a musical colleague and when, and how much, to make it about one’s ego; all for the good of the music. Aside from whatever level of innate ability a musician was blessed with (or not) those are things that can be worked on and developed. While that work is a kind of "shedding" it mostly requires playing with others. To the point that I think you implied re "shed time": a musician can be blessed with the highest level of innate musical intuition possible, but ultimately he has to be in total control of the physical mechanism of playing or singing (achieved by putting in a lot of "shed time") otherwise the body cannot translate the musical messages that the brain/heart sends in a way that is physically controlled enough to allow the kind of musical cohesion that you are hearing in that clip.

To your second question: if one considers what the very best examples there have been throughout the history of the music I would rate that a solid 8. Acknowledging a certain amount of inevitable subjectivity, for me, Miles’ classic quintet from the 60’s with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams set the standard for that kind of ensemble musical intuition as did the Bill Evans trio with Scott Lafaro and Paul Motian.

I said I was closing out my caravan contributions.  I lied.  I just couldn't resist adding "Desert Marauders" -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL877qkv_YM