Quotes By Steve Lacy

Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.

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.

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.