Playing the changes vs. playing over the key center

[Bob_Ross]

A good player can make key center stuff sound great.

A good player outlining the changes may sound better, or jazzier, or something, by adding harmonic interest.

A lot of players add additional changes or make substitute changes and sound great playing over those.

There's an addendum to George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept Of Tonal Organization called "The River Trip" that Russell wrote circa 1961, where he talks about how older guys like Coleman Hawkins were navigating every single harmonic waystation as it came along, and more modern [sic] players like Lester Young, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman would reference succesively fewer of those individual touchstones, instead opting to take a broader overview of what the changes were...or at least, what was required to infer the changes and stay connected to them.

Russell's book included this cute diagram to sum up what he was writing about (see attachment) Russell - The River Trip.pdf

...but in short: They're all valid approaches to playing jazz; it just depends what kind of jazz you want it to sound like.