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" There is an awful lot of what I call recreational jazz going on, where people go out and learn a particular language or style and become real sharks on somebody else's language. "

Steve Lacy

Sharks

Language

Jazz

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

Steve Lacy

Just

Sit

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

" Jazz is people's music, a collectivity. "

" We played for peanuts. But we did what we wanted to do, we heard what we wanted to hear, we performed what we wanted to perform, we learned what we wanted to learn. "

" Register is very important. Music sounds best in a certain register. "

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

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

" 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. "

" You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others. "

" The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music. "

Steve Lacy

Music

Saxophone

" I've performed solo for 20 years now, but I don't do much of it, because if you only play alone, you go crazy and out of tune and play foolish music. "

" I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone. "

" The potential for the saxophone is unlimited. "

" Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo. "

" I've always been extremely lucky in playing with great people who knew much more than I did. That's how I got from there to here. "

" If you have music you want to play that no one asks you to play, you have to go out and find where you can play it. It's called do or die. "

" Saxophone is one thing, and music is another. "

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

" The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

Steve Lacy

Reed

Spirit

" Bamboo is not a weed, it's a flowering plant. Bamboo is a magnificent plant. "

" 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. "

" What I learned with Cecil Taylor was strategy and survival and how to resist temptations and resist getting discouraged. "

" The more original something is, the more of a threat it seems until the people catch up with it. That happened with Thelonious Monk. It happened with anybody who is really original. "

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

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

" It's very important to go through periods where you sound just rotten and you know it, and you have to persevere or give up. "

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