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" 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. "
Steve Lacy
Kind
Production
Before
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" You must have the music to justify an instrument's extensive use. "
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" If you're trying to invent something new, you're going to reach a lot of discouraging points, and most people give up. "
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Going
New
People
" What I learned with Cecil Taylor was strategy and survival and how to resist temptations and resist getting discouraged. "
Steve Lacy
Discouraged
Strategy
Survival
" I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone. "
Steve Lacy
Saxophone
Play
Love
" Register is very important. Music sounds best in a certain register. "
Steve Lacy
Sounds
Music
Important
" Kenny G, I have to be grateful to him for proving that the instrument can be played all different kinds of ways. "
Steve Lacy
Different
Him
Be Grateful
" 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. "
Steve Lacy
Did
Learned
Wanted
" The potential for the saxophone is unlimited. "
Steve Lacy
Saxophone
Unlimited
Potential
" 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. "
Steve Lacy
Here
Great
Lucky
" People don't want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately, and this is one of the biggest problems in the world. "
Steve Lacy
Good
World
Want
" 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. "
Steve Lacy
Know
Alone
Saxophone
" You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others. "
Steve Lacy
Work
You
Saxophone
" Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work. "
Steve Lacy
You
Work
Invent
" The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music. "
Steve Lacy
Music
Saxophone
More
" I think it is in collaboration that the nature of art is revealed. "
Steve Lacy
Art
Think
Collaboration
" 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. "
Steve Lacy
Place
Musicians
Club
" 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. "
Steve Lacy
Play
Want
You
" 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. "
Steve Lacy
You
Through
Sound
" 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
Me
Reed
Spirit
" When I first started playing music in 1955, there was just a small body of people that knew it. It was a very esoteric type of thing. "
Steve Lacy
People
Body
Music
" The soprano turned out to sound to me like the right hand on the piano. "
Steve Lacy
Sound
Right
Piano
" 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
" Circumstances can be very important. Find the right people to work with. "
Steve Lacy
Circumstances
People
Important
" You have to sound sad first of all, then maybe later you can sound good. "
Steve Lacy
Sad
Good
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. "
Steve Lacy
Interesting
Losing
Play
" 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. "
Steve Lacy
People
Monk
Original
" When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now. "
Steve Lacy
Now
Originality
Research
" 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
Up
Just
Sit
" I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever. "
Steve Lacy
History
Love
Jazz
" I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz. "
Steve Lacy
New
New Orleans
Music