Steve Lacy

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

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.

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

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.

When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.

If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!

Music isn’t just learning notes and playing them. You learn notes to play the music of your soul.

I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, “Don’t move.” And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.

To imitate someone is to insult them.

I don’t like to hear someone put down Dixieland. Those people who say there’s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don’t know.

The trio is the biggest sound you can have with the smallest unit.

I’m using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable.

Dance music-as I keep saying, you can dance to a windshield wiper… a windshield wiper that’s fairly steady gives you a beat and all you need is an out-of-tune playing ‘Melancholy Baby’ and you’ve got dance music.

For me, there wasn’t a line between working and getting paid or simply playing for fun.

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 am a devout musician.

It’s not what they think, it’s about what’s best for the music.

The true beauty of music is that it connects people.

The problem is that a lot of the blues stations are late on Saturday night, and like a lot of people, I ain’t no vampire!