Steve Lacy Quotes

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Risk

  Tags in Heart, Jazz

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music, Important

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Play, Boring

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Good

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Certainly

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Grateful

• Jazz is people’s music, a collectivity.

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music, Jazz

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Jazz, Wine

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Important

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Single, Sound

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Trying, Invent

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Listen

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music, Play

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music, Alone, Crazy

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Working, Limit

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Pianist

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in Nature

  Tags in Collaboration

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

  Steve Lacy

  Topics in History, Love

  Tags in Jazz

Steve Lacy (45)

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

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Today's Anniversary - 4th January

Births

• 1905 - Sterling Price Holloway Jr.
• 1954 - Eugene Chadbourne
• 1896 - Everett McKinley Dirksen
• 1962 - Peter Steele
• 1890 - Mordecai Wyatt Johnson

Deaths

• 1985 - Russell Page
• 1965 - T. S. Eliot
• 2005 - Robert Heilbroner
• 1960 - Dudley Nichols
• 2001 - Les Brown