One thing and then I'll go away. When listening to someone improvise, the playing licks thing is obvious and doesn't work for me. Sticking a lick into this or that key is not inventing on the fly. Also, extended chords sound like extended chords and not music to me. Jazz learned in college sounds like jazz learned in college. As in I learned to play along with chords and play the chord notes and nothing sounds like music. Chord progressions sound like chord progressions, not like music. For me, music has a melody, rhythm, movement, a progress, a development and an ending. It goes somewhere, it tells a story. Improv furthers that story and builds on it. If it doesn't it is just noodling around on notes that don't clash with what else is going on. Which is what most stuff for decades has sounded like. And then there is the free stuff. Which doesn't sound like music to me.
Now I near someone say, man, you just don't get it. We are pushing boundaries here. Okay. Push away. And people will sit there nodding like they like it. Do they?