Quotes by Steve Lacy

About Steve Lacy:

Steve Lacy 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 of little more than a single questioning phrase, repeated several times.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Risk is at the heart of jazz. Every note we play is a risk.

Steve Lacy

Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.

Steve Lacy

What I learned with Cecil Taylor was strategy and survival and how to resist temptations and resist getting discouraged.

Steve Lacy

When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now.

Steve Lacy

When I heard Monk in person in 1955, he was playing with a quartet in a small club. The place was full of musicians, but there was no public at all.

Steve Lacy

Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo.

Steve Lacy

The more original something is, the more of a threat it seems until the people catch up with it. That happened with Thelonious Monk. It happened with anybody who is really original.

Steve Lacy

There is an awful lot of what I call recreational jazz going on, where people go out and learn a particular language or style and become real sharks on somebody else's language.

Steve Lacy

I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever.

Steve Lacy

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.

Steve Lacy

I've always been extremely lucky in playing with great people who knew much more than I did. That's how I got from there to here.

Steve Lacy

I was spoiled by Monk's music because it was so good, so complete.

Steve Lacy

People don't want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately, and this is one of the biggest problems in the world.

Steve Lacy

You have to sound sad first of all, then maybe later you can sound good.

Steve Lacy

I've been working on the soprano saxophone for 40 years, and the possibilities are astounding. It's up to you, the only limit is the imagination.

Steve Lacy

I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.

Steve Lacy

I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio.

Steve Lacy

Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.

Steve Lacy

The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music.

Steve Lacy

If you have music you want to play that no one asks you to play, you have to go out and find where you can play it. It's called do or die.

Steve Lacy

Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.

Steve Lacy

Author Bio

  • NameSteve Lacy
  • DescriptionAmerican saxophonist
  • BornJuly 23, 1934
  • DiedJune 4, 2004
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionComposer; Jazz Musician
  • AwardsMacArthur Fellows Program