Steve Lacy

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

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.

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.

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

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

You only go around once and this ain’t no rehearsal.

May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung.

I’m not a star. I’m just backing up the cats.

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

They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

You never master the instrument. You always just strive to get better.

Our music is generally the music I would play way back when I was in the record business. So I’ll play World Waiting For The Sunrise and How High The Moon, maybe Over The Rainbow, some standards. But it depends upon the artist that comes up – if people like a certain kind of music, I will focus the show that way. Whoever walks up on to the stage is the star – he is the picture, we are the frame. The frame is there to make the star look better – let’s make this fellow the best he’s ever going to be.

Jazz is an art that makes a person completely naked.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

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

Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet, put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying ‘yes.’

If jazz has to be termed as a wave, then music is a sea, but if the reflectors in the water is the chord.

Jazz music will continue to thrive, possibly in unexpected ways.

Jazz is the assassination, the murdering, the slaying of syncopation. I would even go so far as to confess that we are musical anarchists.

I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.