Steve Lacy
Steve Lacy
Steve Lacy, born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York City, was a jazz saxophonist and composer recognized as one of the important players of soprano saxophone. Coming to prominence in the 1950s as a progressive Dixieland musician, Lacy went on to a long and prolific career. He worked extensively in experimental jazz and to a lesser extent in free improvisation, but Lacy's music was typically melodic and tightly-structured. Lacy also became a highly distinctive composer, with compositions often built out...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth23 July 1934
CountryUnited States of America
Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.
When I first started playing music in 1955, there was just a small body of people that knew it. It was a very esoteric type of thing.
They call me before they go into production, when they have a prototype, and they call legitimate saxophonists, too. As opposed to the other kind.
Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo.
It starts with a single sound. If there's something in that sound, then it's worth continuing.
The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.
Risk is at the heart of jazz. Every note we play is a risk.
When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now.
You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others.
I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down.
I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.
A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow.
If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that.
To me, there is spirit in a reed. It's a living thing, a weed, really, and it does contain spirit of a sort. It's really an ancient vibration.