Phillyjazz,
More or less agree, and the overuse of labels degenerated into its own set of problems.. At the same time I get a little tired of some of the better-than-thou "I don't do labels" thing I hear from some of my musician collegues. The bottom line is that without labels and categories we can't navigate the world. So If I want to purchase sheet music for the Weber #2 clarinet concerto, and I ask the music store clerk where the classical music section is, he/she ought not tell me "hey man it's all music". Similarly if I'm looking to find musicians to form a quartet Stylistically aligned with what Trane did with McCoy Tyner, Elivin Jones and Jimmy Garrison, I need labels and categories. (And I'm sure Mile thought very much thought in terms of stylistic labels and catagories when looking to fill out the various incarnations of his ensembles- Kenny Garrett ain't no swing alto player). As for the term modern, I agree, many confuse its meaning with that of "contemporary"-which is not what it means in the arts. So, for example, modern art begins in the mid late 1800s with the likes of Cézanne, Van Gogh, Seurat etc. Personally, and especially as a modern jazz clarinet player, the idiomatic category "modern jazz" is especially important to me, since the instrument was nearly abandoned with the bebop revolution, and is typically type cast as being wedded to a pre-bop idiom. Those of us who are devoted to the use of this horn in the modern jazz idiom (bebop, hard bop, post bob etc) are part of a very small club indeed!

Joseph P Cannavo
Not everything can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.