Steve Lacy Quotes

#1. Kenny G, I have to be grateful to him for proving that the instrument can be played all different kinds of ways.

Steve Lacy

#2. You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others.

Steve Lacy

#3. In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

#5. You must have the music to justify an instrument's extensive use.

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

#9. 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.

Steve Lacy

#10. 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.

Steve Lacy

#11. It starts with a single sound. If there's something in that sound, then it's worth continuing.

Steve Lacy

#12. 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

#13. Register is very important. Music sounds best in a certain register.

Steve Lacy

#14. We played for peanuts. But we did what we wanted to do, we heard what we wanted to hear, we performed what we wanted to perform, we learned what we wanted to learn.

Steve Lacy

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. I think it is in collaboration that the nature of art is revealed.

Steve Lacy

#18. 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.

Steve Lacy

#19. It's very important to go through periods where you sound just rotten and you know it, and you have to persevere or give up.

Steve Lacy

#20. The soprano turned out to sound to me like the right hand on the piano.

Steve Lacy

#21. Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

#24. Bamboo is not a weed, it's a flowering plant. Bamboo is a magnificent plant.

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

#26. I've performed solo for 20 years now, but I don't do much of it, because if you only play alone, you go crazy and out of tune and play foolish music.

Steve Lacy

#27. The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.

Steve Lacy

#28. When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.

Steve Lacy

#29. 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

#30. A young pianist & composer who has demonstrated an exceptional creativity, in both his playing & his writing, as well as showing us all, his very strong commitment & motivation to aim for high musical goals. Talent like his is rare.

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. Play difficult and interesting things. If you play boring things, you risk losing your appetite. Saxophone can be tedious with too much of the same.

Steve Lacy

#35. I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down.

Steve Lacy

#36. Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

#38. If you're trying to invent something new, you're going to reach a lot of discouraging points, and most people give up.

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

#40. Lacy was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she was potential; with others she was realized.

Steve Martin

#41. Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.

Steve Lacy

#42. 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

#43. 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.

Steve Lacy

#44. The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity.

Steve Lacy

#45. Circumstances can be very important. Find the right people to work with.

Steve Lacy

#46. 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.

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

#48. Make the drummer sound good.

Steve Lacy

#49. 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.

Steve Lacy

#50. Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work.

Steve Lacy

#51. 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