Steve Lacy Quotes

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music, Extensive

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Sad

  Tags in First

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Work

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Original

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Person

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music, Finally

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Originality

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Survival

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Played

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Spirit

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Production

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Awful, Call

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Like

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Instruments

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Interesting

• The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Potential

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Original

•  

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

   

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Play

• Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music

Steve Lacy (45)

Birth:	23rd July, 1934
Death:	4th June, 2004
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Composer, Saxophonist

Related Authors

• Clint Eastwood
• Vic Mignogna
• Dario Fo
• Pablo Casals
• Claudio Monteverdi
• Artur Schnabel
• Jerry Herman
• Malcolm Arnold
• Jim Steinman
• Samuel Wesley

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 25th May

Births

• 1966 - Tatjana Patitz
• 1908 - Theodore Roethke
• 1930 - Sonia Rykiel
• 1919 - Raymond Smullyan
• 1963 - Mike Myers

Deaths

• 2003 - Sloan Wilson
• 2011 - Leonora Carrington
• 1954 - Robert Capa
• 1899 - Rosa Bonheur
• 2001 - Alberto Korda