Jazz pianist Bill Evans sits at a keyboard with his brother Harry, a music teacher, and works through how a musician actually learns to improvise. Filmed for a television program, the conversation stays close and unhurried, Evans demonstrating ideas on the piano as he talks rather than just describing them. He breaks down his own practice of building a solo in stages, starting with the simplest possible interpretation of a tune's melody and layering complexity onto it only once the foundation is solid, a method he says keeps improvisation honest rather than showy. He talks about discipline, patience, and the difference between a musician who has absorbed a tradition and one who is just imitating its surface. Evans had just come off Kind of Blue with Miles Davis and was leading his own trio, and his ideas here shaped players like Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. There is no narrator and no reenactment, just Evans thinking out loud at the keyboard.