I'm afraid that I have found most jazz performers (unless in a solo setting) to be playing to each other rather than to the audience. It's a bit like watching a musical tennis match. The audience doesn't seem vital to the event. They are overheard rather than heard.

Perhaps some of my perception of the place of instrumental solos versus vocals comes from bad experience (both as audience and performer) of music as background wallpaper designed to aid digestion and sell beer. Why do people feel that they can chat their way through live music (don't get me started about live theatre) as if the performer can't hear them? If they don't want to listen why are they there? Vocalists don't seem to suffer this as much as instrumentalists.

This may be why I feel difficult solos are aimed at other musicians. Too many times no one else is listening.