Steve Lacy

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.

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

In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

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

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

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.

For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn’t live with it–even of my own music–with the same nuances forever.

Music must be an innovation.

As long as musicians have passion for spontaneity and creating something that’s never been before, Jazz will flourish.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self- consciousness.

Jazz has such great feeling and emotional content it really doesn’t require technical understanding.

If a Jazz musician plays someone else’s song, he has a responsibility to make a distinct and original statement.

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

I used to play pianos in bars. You know in hotels, you’d see guys playing piano with a snifter? That was me, with a painted-on mustache. I was about 15.

To the person who uses music as a medium for the expression of ideas, feelings, images, or what have you; anything which facilitates this expression is properly his instrument.

When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.

[On urging Nyro to tell Barbara Streisand that ‘Wedding Bell Blues’ had been personally written for her] It’s not a big lie.

Music is the shorthand of emotion

I have always seen Jazz as innovative.

I’ve been told that nobody sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do.

When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles and Dizzy it was very difficult.