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Improvisation has attracted increasing attention within organisational and managerial studies as a method to improve efficiency and innovation without adequately understanding the conditions prerequisite for improvisation’s operation. This paper examines how the jazz repertoire theory, and New Cultural studies of jazz address improvisation within jazz ensembles, showing neither adequately explaining improvisation. The paper draws on Bourdieu’s concepts, fleshed out in Wacquant’s ethnography research of habitus acquisition among pugilists to propose a model of the symbiotic ensemble providing the conditions essential for improvisation. Symbiotic ensembles are composed of synergetic musicians, all of relatively equal musical and social status, who have commonly accrued an embodied musical improvising habitus through their musical and life trajectories, from first learning an instrument, transitioning to improvisation, performing in various ensemble settings whereby they acquire influences and become vectors transmitting musical concepts among disparate musical ensembles.