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
The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music.
Nobody was playing the soprano saxophone and certainly nobody was trying to do anything with it. So I was all alone. I didn't know that at first.
Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.
You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others.
I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.
The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.
People don't want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately, and this is one of the biggest problems in the world.
Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.
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.
You have to sound sad first of all, then maybe later you can sound good.
The soprano turned out to sound to me like the right hand on the piano.
Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.
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.
I was spoiled by Monk's music because it was so good, so complete.