Jazz Improvisation

When I first took piano lessons as a child I learned to read music and follow the notation on sheet music. Although I learned scales and was exposed to modes as part of my music instruction, composition and improvisation remained a mystery until my late teens when I took lessons from a jazz pianist during my freshman year in college. Even then, although I could repeat patterns that I copied from the instructor, and even modify those patterns slightly, true improvisation did not come easily, because I did not understand the underlying musical structure.