Jazz, the final frontier?

These are the voyages of SaltmanKnowles... (and yes, we do love Star Trek)

Twenty years ago, I had a music professor in school who repeatedly proclaimed "Jazz is dead" to our entire class.
It often reminded me of "space: the final frontier".
What do we do once we shoot off into space? Are there no more places to go?

If we keep doing and playing the same things, then we might be abetting the death of great music. Classical music seems to like this, as its difficult to remember any major programs not containing music by people living during the past 100 years.
This is not to say that Classical music doesn't have programs of new music, but they seem to rarely contain any Singable, non-gymnastic, or groove elements- translation; "not good".

Well, the good new is that Jazz is in fact not dead at all, but the old gatekeepers certainly make it seem that way. There is plenty of great new Jazz with all of the aforementioned proper elements-
We have new grooves to write, beautiful new melodies to compose and some very hip and appealing harmonies to be voiced.
the only question is; when will the rest of the community catch on to the fact that these are the elements which make our music GREAT- and will lead us beyond the last frontier?