Steve Lacy

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

In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.

I fell in love with Jazz when I was 12 listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of Jazz in New York on the radio.

There’s a lot of recreational Jazz going on, where cats learn a particular style and become sharks on somebody else’s language.

People don’t want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately and this is one of the biggest problems.

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

Music is the only language in which you cannot say anything sarcastic.

A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality.

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

What a fool I am to think my breaking heart could kid the moon.

A Les Paul feels like a guitar and I play differently on that and I sound too much like someone else.

Oh, my darling, it’s incredible, that someone so unforgettable should think I am unforgettable, too.

You can practice to learn technique, but I’m more interested in conceiving something in the moment.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

If I can’t feel it, I don’t want to sing it.

It’s about getting the sound to flow from your body and allowing that sound to get to the piano.

Always look ahead, but never look back.

A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life.

I cannot say what I think is right about Music. I only know the rightness of it.

Last time I saw Count Basie, he was in a wheelchair. They wheeled him up onto the stage, he sits down at the piano, and he gives the downbeat, and that band played like they were in heaven. And right in the middle, the band cuts. He had to take one hand and put the other on it, and he comes down with one note. And it was the greatest note I ever heard in my life.

I cannot play a lie. I have to believe in what I play or it won’t come out.