Steve Lacy

Steve Lacy (July 23, 1934 – June 4, 2004), born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York City, was a jazz saxophonist and composer recognized as one of the important players of soprano saxophone. Coming to prominence in the 1950s as a progressive Dixieland musician, Lacy went on to a long and prolific career. He worked extensively in experimental jazz and dabbled in free improvisation, but Lacy's music was typically melodic and tightly-structured. Lacy also became a highly distinctive composer with a signature organic of style, with compositions often built out of little more than a single questioning phrase, repeated several times.

The music of Thelonious Monk became a permanent part of Lacy's repertoire after a stint in the pianist's band, with Monk's songs appearing on virtually every Lacy album and concert program; Lacy often partnered with trombonist Roswell Rudd in exploring Monk's work. Beyond Monk, Lacy performed the work of jazz composers such as Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington and Herbie Nichols; unlike many jazz musicians he rarely played standard popular or show tunes.

Early life and career
Lacy began his career at sixteen playing Dixieland music with much older musicians such as Henry "Red" Allen, Pee Wee Russell, George "Pops" Foster and Zutty Singleton and then with Kansas City jazz players like Buck Clayton, Dicky Wells, and Jimmy Rushing. He then became involved with the avant-garde, performing on Jazz Advance (1956), the debut album of Cecil Taylor, and appearing with Taylor's groundbreaking quartet at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival; he also made a notable appearance on an early Gil Evans album. His most enduring relationship, however, was with the music of Thelonious Monk: he recorded the first album to feature only Monk compositions (Reflections, Prestige, 1958) and briefly played in Monk's band in 1960 and later on Monk's Big Band/Quartet album (Columbia, 1963).

Europe and sextet
Lacy's first visit to Europe came in 1965, with a visit to Copenhagen in the company of Kenny Drew; he went to Italy and formed a quartet with Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava and the South African musicians Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo (their visit to Buenos Aires is documented on The Forest and the Zoo, ESP, 1967). After a brief return in New York, he returned to Italy, then in 1970 moved to Paris, where he lived until the last two years of his life. He became a widely respected figure on the European jazz scene, though he remained less well known in the U.S.

The core of Lacy's activities from the 1970s to the 1990s was his sextet: his wife, singer/violinist Irene Aebi, soprano/alto saxophonist Steve Potts, pianist Bobby Few, bassist Jean-Jacques Avenel, and drummer Oliver Johnson (later John Betsch). Sometimes this group was scaled up to a large ensemble (e.g. Vespers, Soul Note, 1993, which added Ricky Ford on tenor sax and Tom Varner on French horn), sometimes pared down to a quartet, trio, or even a two-saxophone duo. He played duos with pianist Eric Watson. Lacy also, beginning in the 1970s, became a specialist in solo saxophone; he ranks with Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker in the development of this demanding form of improvisation.

Lacy was interested in all the arts: the visual arts and poetry in particular became important sources for him. Collaborating with painters and dancers in multimedia projects, he made musical settings of his favourite writers: Robert Creeley, Samuel Beckett, Tom Raworth, Taslima Nasrin, Herman Melville, Brion Gysin and other Beat writers, including settings for the Tao Te Ching and haiku poetry. As Creeley noted in The Poetry Project Newsletter, "There’s no way simply to make clear how particular Steve Lacy was to poets or how much he can now teach them by fact of his own practice and example. No one was ever more generous or perceptive."

Later career
In 1992, he was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (nicknamed the "genius grant").

He also collaborated with a truly extraordinary range of musicians, from traditional jazz to the avant-garde to contemporary classical music. Outside of his regular sextet, his most regular collaborator was pianist Mal Waldron, with whom he recorded a number of duet albums (notably Sempre Amore, a collection of Ellington/Strayhorn material, Soul Note, 1987).Live in Berlin,

Lacy played his 'farewell concerts to Europe' in Belgium, in duo and solo, for a small but motivated public. He returned to the United States in 2002, where he began teaching at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. One of his last public performances was in front of 25,000 people at the close of a peace rally on Boston Common in March 2003, shortly before the US-led invasion of Iraq.

After Lacy was diagnosed with cancer in August 2003, he continued playing and teaching until weeks before his death on June 4, 2004 at the age of 69.

As leader

 * Soprano Sax (Prestige, 1957)
 * Reflections (Prestige, 1958)
 * The Straight Horn of Steve Lacy (Candid, 1960)
 * Evidence (New Jazz, 1961)
 * School Days (1963)
 * Disposability (Vik, 1965)
 * Sortie (GTA, 1966)
 * Zvatsha (unissued, 1966)
 * The Forest And The Zoo (1967)
 * Roba (1969)
 * Moon (1969)
 * Epistrophy (1969)
 * Stations (1970)
 * Wordless (1971)
 * Lapis (1971)
 * The Gap (1972)
 * Solo (1972)
 * Live in Lisbon: Estilhacos (1972)
 * Flaps, with Franz Koglmann (1972)
 * The Crust (1973)
 * Scraps (1974)
 * Saxophone Special (1974)
 * Flakes (1974)
 * Lumps (1974)
 * Straws (1975)
 * Dreams (1975)
 * Torments (1975)
 * Stalks (1975)
 * Solo at Mandara (1975)
 * The Wire (1975)
 * Distant Voices (1975)
 * Axieme (1975)
 * Stabs (1975)
 * Opium for Franz, with Bill Dixon (1975)
 * Clangs, with Andrea Centazzo (1976)
 * Trickles (1976)
 * Tao (1976)
 * Sidelines (1977, Improvising Artists)
 * Company, vol.4, with Derek Bailey (1976)
 * Trio Live (1976)
 * Raps (1977)
 * Follies (1977)
 * Threads (1977) Horo Records
 * Clinkers (1977)
 * Stamps (1977)
 * Catch (1977) Horo
 * The Owl (1977)
 * Shots (1977)
 * Points (1978)
 * The Woe/Crops (1979)
 * The Way (1979)
 * Eronel (1979) Horo
 * Troubles (1979)
 * Duo: Alter Ego, with Walter Zuber Armstrong (1979)
 * Duo: Call Notes, with Walter Zuber Armstrong (1979)
 * Capers (1981)
 * Tips (1981)
 * Songs (1981)
 * Ballets (1981)
 * The Flame (1982)
 * Regeneration, with Roswell Rudd, Misha Mengelberg et al. - (1983)
 * Change Of Season, with Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennink et al. - (1984)
 * Blinks (1984)
 * Prospectus (1984)
 * Futurities (1985)
 * Chirps (1985)
 * The Condor (1986)
 * Outings (1986)
 * Hocus-Pocus (1986)
 * Deadline (1987)
 * Only Monk (1987)
 * The Kiss (1987)
 * The Gleam (1987)
 * Dutch Masters, with Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennink, George Lewis, Ernst Reijseger (1987)
 * Explorations, with Subroto Roy Chowdury (1987)
 * Live in Budapest, with Steve Potts (1987)
 * The Amiens Concert, with Eric Watson and John Lindberg (1987)
 * Paris Blues, with Gil Evans (1987)
 * Momentum (1987)
 * The Window (1988)
 * Image (1989)
 * The Door (1989)
 * Morning Joy (1990)
 * Anthem (1990)
 * Rushes: Ten Songs from Russia (1990)
 * Steve Lacy Solo (1991)
 * More Monk (1991)
 * Flim-Flam (1991)
 * Itinery (1991)
 * Remains (1992)
 * Live A Sweet Basil (1992)
 * Spirit of Mingus (1992) Freelance Records
 * We See (1993)
 * Vespers (1993)
 * Three Blokes, with Evan Parker and Lol Coxhill (1994)
 * The Rendezvous, with Barry Wedgle (1994)
 * Revenue (1995)
 * Packet (1995)
 * Actuality (1995)
 * Bye-Ya (1996) Freelance Records
 * Five Facings (1996)
 * Associates (1996)
 * Blues for Aida (1996)
 * 5 x Monk 5 x Lacy (1997)
 * Live at Unity Temple (1998)
 * Sands (1998)
 * The Cry (1999)
 * The Rent (1999)
 * The Joan Miró Foundation Concert (1999)
 * Monk's Dream (1999)
 * Snips (2000)
 * Hooky (2000)
 * Best Wishes (2001)
 * The Holy La (2002)
 * 10 of Dukes & 6 Originals (2002)
 * The Beat Suite (2003)
 * Materioso (Monk's Moods) (2003)
 * New Jazz Meeting Baden-Baden 2002 (2004)
 * November (2010)

with Mal Waldron

 * Journey Without End (1971)
 * Mal Waldron with the Steve Lacy Quintet (1972)
 * Hard Talk (1974)
 * One-Upmanship (1977)
 * Moods (1978)
 * Live at Dreher (1981)
 * Snake-Out (1982)
 * Let's Call This (1986)
 * Sempre Amore (1987)
 * The Super Quartet Live at Sweet Basil (1987)
 * Hot House (1991)
 * I Remember Thelonious (1992)
 * Let's Call This... Esteem (1993)
 * Communique (1997)
 * One More Time (2002)
 * Japan Dream (2004)
 * At the Bimhuis 1982 (2006)

As sideman

 * Dick Sutton - Jazz Idiom (1954)
 * Dick Sutton Sextet - Progressive Dixieland (1954)
 * Tom Stewart - Quintet/Sextet (1956)
 * Whitey Mitchell Sextette - Whitey Mitchell Sextette (1956)
 * Joe Puma - Modern Jazz Sampler (1956)
 * Cecil Taylor - Jazz Advance (1956)
 * Gil Evans - Gil Evans & Ten (1957)
 * Cecil Taylor - At Newport (1958)
 * Gil Evans - Great Jazz Standards (1959)
 * Miles Davis - At Carnegie Hall (1961)
 * Miles Davis - Quiet Nights (1963)
 * Thelonious Monk - Big Band and Quartet In Concert (1964)
 * Bobby Hackett - Hello Louis (1964)
 * Gil Evans - The Individualism of Gil Evans (1964)
 * Kenny Burrell - Guitar Forms (1965)
 * Jazz Composers Orchestra - Communication (1965)
 * Carla Bley - Jazz Realities (1966)
 * Giorgio Gaslini - Nuovi Sentimenti (1966)
 * Gary Burton - A Genuine Tong Funeral (1967)
 * Max Roach - Sounds as a Roach (1968)
 * Giorgio Gaslini - Il Grido: Big Band Live (1968)
 * Giovanni Tommaso - Indefinitive Atmosphere (1969)
 * Giovanni Tommaso - The Healthy Food Band (1970)
 * Alan Silva - Seasons-Stereophonic-Pictures (1970)
 * Giorgio Gaslini & Jean-Luc Ponty - Fabbrica Occupata (1973)
 * Maria Monti - Il Bestiario (1974)
 * Globe Unity Special - Evidence, vol.1 (1975)
 * Globe Unity Special - Into the Valley, vol.2 (1975)
 * Roswell Rudd - Blow-Bone (1976)
 * Area - Maledetti (1976)
 * Area - Event '76 (1976)
 * Company - Company, vol.5, 6, 7 (1977)
 * Musica Elettronica Viva - United Patchwork (1977)
 * Kenny Davern - Unexpected (1978)
 * Gil Evans - Parabola (1978)
 * Laboratorio della Quercia - Laboratorio della Quercia del Tasso (1978)
 * Globe Unity Orchestra - Compositions (1979)
 * Various artists: Amarcord Nino Rota (on "Roma") (1980)
 * Interpretations Of Monk (1981)
 * Tiziana Ghiglioni - Somebody Special (1986)