Depends on who's listening I think, though I have heard jazz described as America's classical music - take that for what you will. Speaking for myself, I got into jazz via classical music, as they both (to me) require the same amount of active listening/concentration to fully appreciate what's going on.
As a side note, I think that while jazz is more associated with improvisation, it's not certainly not a stranger in classical music. To me, a lot of the "improvisation" comes from the composer, who develops and modifies his themes and motifs. To my mind, jazz on the other hand relies more on sketches from the composer, and it's up to performers to fill in the blanks. And while some solos/cadenzas are written out for the classical performer, improvisation is certainly no stranger to the genre, I'm thinking. In fact, a (classical) musician who could not improvise was considered a very dull performer.
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