Steve Lacy

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Sometimes when you start losing detail, whether it’s in music or in life, something as small as failing to be polite, you start to lose substance.

I’m believe that all people are in possession of what might be called a ‘universal musical mind.’

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

I was never interested in singing in the church or school. I was more interested in becoming a musician.

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

Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument. This is a comprehensive technique . . . a feeling for the keyboard that will allow you to transfer any emotional utterance into it. What has to happen is that you develop a comprehensive technique and then say, forget that. I’m just going to be expressive through the piano.

Music is to the soul what water is to the body.

You gotta mean it and you gotta treat it gentle.

I’ve noticed that the more adventurous and in that mode that I am, it seems that the more the audience really likes it.

Jazz stresses less on technical exhibitionism and much more on emotional content.

Blues purists never cared for me. I don’t worry about it. I think if it this way: When I made ‘Three O’ Clock Blues,’ they were not there. The people out there made the tune. And blues purists just wrote about it. The people is who I’m trying to satisfy.

There is no truer truth obtainable by man than comes of music.

Being a musician is what I do, but it’s not what I am.

Jazz music today is from the head and not the heart.

There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead