Steve Lacy Quotes

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Steve Lacy

Profession : Musician

Birth : July 23, 1934

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

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

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

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

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

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

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

Steve Lacy

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

The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.

Steve Lacy

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

Steve Lacy

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

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

Steve Lacy

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

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

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