Steve Lacy

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

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

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

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

Jazz musician is a combination entertainer, poet, singer, educator, student, artist, seducer and all-round good fellow.

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

Once you start collecting records you learn more and more about Jazz and Blues.

My style is to just play. The more “live” you capture your music-the more unthought-out-the more magical it is.

If you have something in your life worth celebrating, you can put it in a blues song.

Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.

The day of the great jazz improviser who doesn’t know how to read music is over.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know

When you are studying Jazz best thing to do is listen to records and live music as much you can and absorb everything.

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

I’ve worked with jazz artists, country artists, classical artists, pop artists. I never wanted there to be categories, because when I was a kid there weren’t.

The emotional reaction is all that matters.

Jazz is a music that allows a person to express his deepest, most personal self.

I have no elitist concepts about Jazz. I would not be the musician I am today without experiencing invaluable music styles that are at the roots of African American black life and culture.

Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul and purity. A wonderful young voice.

Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument.