Steve Lacy

“If you're trying to invent something new, you're going to reach a lot of discouraging points, and most people give up.”

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

“Nobody was playing the soprano saxophone and certainly nobody was trying to do anything with it. So I was all alone. I didn't know that at first.”

“Play difficult and interesting things. If you play boring things, you risk losing your appetite. Saxophone can be tedious with too much of the same.”

“Circumstances can be very important. Find the right people to work with.”

“I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down.”

“I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever.”

“Kenny G, I have to be grateful to him for proving that the instrument can be played all different kinds of ways.”

“Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work.”

“Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.”

“I think it is in collaboration that the nature of art is revealed.”

“When I heard Monk in person in 1955, he was playing with a quartet in a small club. The place was full of musicians, but there was no public at all.”

“The soprano turned out to sound to me like the right hand on the piano.”

“To me, there is spirit in a reed. It's a living thing, a weed, really, and it does contain spirit of a sort. It's really an ancient vibration.”

“Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.”

“When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now.”

“It starts with a single sound. If there's something in that sound, then it's worth continuing.”

“You must have the music to justify an instrument's extensive use.”

“If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that.”

“They call me before they go into production, when they have a prototype, and they call legitimate saxophonists, too. As opposed to the other kind.”