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Vintage jazz refers to the early styles of jazz that flourished from the 1910s through the 1930s, encompassing New Orleans/early hot jazz, classic blues, and the rise of swing-era dance bands. It emphasizes collective improvisation, call-and-response horn parts, two-beat and early swing feels, and repertoire drawn from blues, ragtime, and Tin Pan Alley standards. Instrumentation typically features cornet/trumpet, clarinet, and trombone as the front line, supported by a rhythm section of piano, banjo or early archtop guitar, tuba or acoustic bass, and drums. Performances often follow 12-bar blues and 32-bar AABA song forms, with head arrangements and short solos that serve the groove and the dance floor. Today, "vintage jazz" is also used to describe historically informed performance and recording approaches that recreate the sound and aesthetic of pre-bebop jazz—mono or minimally mic’d sessions, ribbon mic warmth, and arrangements that spotlight collective energy over virtuosic individualism.

Jazz piano is the art of performing jazz on the piano, combining syncopated rhythms, blues-inflected melodies, and advanced harmony with improvisation. It grew from ragtime and early New Orleans styles into stride, swing, bebop, post-bop, and beyond, developing a vast vocabulary of voicings, comping approaches, left-hand textures, and soloing concepts. The genre spans intimate solo performances to interactive trio settings and orchestral jazz contexts, while remaining rooted in groove, storytelling, and spontaneous creation.