Biography
Born Steven Norman Lackritz on 23 July 1934 in New York City, New York, USA, he died on 4 June 2004 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Among contemporary jazz artists, few concentrated primarily on soprano saxophone, yet Steve Lacy made it his sole instrument. Widely acknowledged as the musician who prompted John Coltrane to adopt the soprano after which countless others did the same, Lacy ultimately drove the instrument’s revival and widespread appeal. His path also stands apart for spanning nearly every jazz idiom, moving from dixieland through bebop into free-form and complete improvisation.
Lacy took up piano as a youngster before switching first to clarinet and then to soprano saxophone. Initially shaped by Sidney Bechet, he launched his professional work in dixieland, and two 1954 dates led by trumpeter Dick Sutton later appeared under Lacy’s name as The Complete Jaguar Sessions in 1986. A striking turn followed when he joined avant-garde pioneer Cecil Taylor for much of the mid-1950s, documented on In Transition; by decade’s end he had also performed with Gil Evans on Pacific Standard Time, Jimmy Giuffre and Sonny Rollins. His 1957 debut Soprano Saxophone featured Wynton Kelly, while the successor Reflections: Steve Lacy Plays The Music Of Thelonious Monk opened a sustained partnership with Mal Waldron. Both sets contained multiple Thelonious Monk pieces, whose work increasingly captivated Lacy. In 1960 he convinced Monk to employ him for sixteen weeks, and from 1961 to 1965 Lacy and Roswell Rudd directed a band devoted exclusively to Monk material “to find out why they were so beautiful.” That preoccupation persisted across decades, yielding School Days, Epistrophy, Eronel, Only Monk and More Monk, all dedicated to deeper examination of Monk’s writing in ensemble and unaccompanied settings.
Lacy relocated to Europe in 1965, collaborating with Carla Bley on the Jazz Realities project and co-leading a unit with Enrico Rava that toured South America in 1966. During this stretch, partly under Don Cherry’s earlier influence, he concentrated on free jazz, heard on Sortie and The Forest And The Zoo. Attention later returned to composed jazz, particularly after he finished his first large-scale work, “The Way,” a suite drawn from the ancient Chinese Tao Te Ching. Occasional total improvisation continued, notably on Company 4 with Derek Bailey and Chirps with Evan Parker. A 1966 return to New York placed him in a quintet alongside Karl Berger and Paul Motian, yet scarce employment prompted a 1967 move back to Europe; he settled in Rome with his Swiss wife, Irene Aebi, whose singing and cello and violin playing appeared on many of his recordings. Three years afterward the couple moved to Paris, which remained their base until Lacy shifted to Berlin in 1997. His 2002 return to America to join the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music delighted the domestic jazz community, although liver cancer claimed him barely two years later.
Fronting his own ensembles, most often a sextet, Lacy assembled one of jazz’s most substantial and varied discographies, reaching a high point in the 1980s with Prospectus, Furturities, The Gleam and Momentum, on which the group refined the complex exchanges and fluid fusion of spontaneity and control that defined their sound. Long-term members included Steve Potts on saxophone, Kent Carter and Jean-Jacques Avenal on bass, Bobby Few on piano, Oliver Johnson who died on 6 March 2002 in Paris, France, on drums, guest trombonist George Lewis, and, perhaps most decisively, Aebi, for whose austere lieder-style singing Lacy fashioned an essentially new approach to jazz songwriting. Texts by modern authors frequently supplied material—Sons with Brion Gysin, Futurities drawing on poems by Robert Creely—yet Tips took a singular route, its melodies built around passages from painter Georges Braque’s notebooks. Beyond the regular group, one of jazz’s boldest, Lacy undertook duo projects with Potts, Ran Blake, Waldron and Evans, together with Monk and Herbie Nichols tributes Regenerations, Change Of Season and The ICP Orchestra Performs Nichols - Monk alongside Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink, the same pair who joined him on Dutch Masters.
Lacy also ranked among modern jazz’s foremost exponents of unaccompanied soprano saxophone. After encountering Anthony Braxton’s solo performances he began shaping his own soprano repertoire in the early 1970s and pursued it through successive concerts and recordings that include the notable Hocus Pocus, The Kiss and Remains. Extraordinarily productive, he issued more than 100 albums under his own name and appeared on roughly as many again as a sideman; paradoxically, Itinerary in 1991 marked his first release leading a big band.
An exceptional composer and improviser, Lacy endures as one of the era’s pivotal jazz figures whose music promises lasting value. He remained, in addition, simply a captivating performer. As Graham Lock observed in 1983, “There are few sounds as distinctive or as lovely as Lacy’s soprano, with its comet-trails of bare bones lyricism.”
Lacy took up piano as a youngster before switching first to clarinet and then to soprano saxophone. Initially shaped by Sidney Bechet, he launched his professional work in dixieland, and two 1954 dates led by trumpeter Dick Sutton later appeared under Lacy’s name as The Complete Jaguar Sessions in 1986. A striking turn followed when he joined avant-garde pioneer Cecil Taylor for much of the mid-1950s, documented on In Transition; by decade’s end he had also performed with Gil Evans on Pacific Standard Time, Jimmy Giuffre and Sonny Rollins. His 1957 debut Soprano Saxophone featured Wynton Kelly, while the successor Reflections: Steve Lacy Plays The Music Of Thelonious Monk opened a sustained partnership with Mal Waldron. Both sets contained multiple Thelonious Monk pieces, whose work increasingly captivated Lacy. In 1960 he convinced Monk to employ him for sixteen weeks, and from 1961 to 1965 Lacy and Roswell Rudd directed a band devoted exclusively to Monk material “to find out why they were so beautiful.” That preoccupation persisted across decades, yielding School Days, Epistrophy, Eronel, Only Monk and More Monk, all dedicated to deeper examination of Monk’s writing in ensemble and unaccompanied settings.
Lacy relocated to Europe in 1965, collaborating with Carla Bley on the Jazz Realities project and co-leading a unit with Enrico Rava that toured South America in 1966. During this stretch, partly under Don Cherry’s earlier influence, he concentrated on free jazz, heard on Sortie and The Forest And The Zoo. Attention later returned to composed jazz, particularly after he finished his first large-scale work, “The Way,” a suite drawn from the ancient Chinese Tao Te Ching. Occasional total improvisation continued, notably on Company 4 with Derek Bailey and Chirps with Evan Parker. A 1966 return to New York placed him in a quintet alongside Karl Berger and Paul Motian, yet scarce employment prompted a 1967 move back to Europe; he settled in Rome with his Swiss wife, Irene Aebi, whose singing and cello and violin playing appeared on many of his recordings. Three years afterward the couple moved to Paris, which remained their base until Lacy shifted to Berlin in 1997. His 2002 return to America to join the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music delighted the domestic jazz community, although liver cancer claimed him barely two years later.
Fronting his own ensembles, most often a sextet, Lacy assembled one of jazz’s most substantial and varied discographies, reaching a high point in the 1980s with Prospectus, Furturities, The Gleam and Momentum, on which the group refined the complex exchanges and fluid fusion of spontaneity and control that defined their sound. Long-term members included Steve Potts on saxophone, Kent Carter and Jean-Jacques Avenal on bass, Bobby Few on piano, Oliver Johnson who died on 6 March 2002 in Paris, France, on drums, guest trombonist George Lewis, and, perhaps most decisively, Aebi, for whose austere lieder-style singing Lacy fashioned an essentially new approach to jazz songwriting. Texts by modern authors frequently supplied material—Sons with Brion Gysin, Futurities drawing on poems by Robert Creely—yet Tips took a singular route, its melodies built around passages from painter Georges Braque’s notebooks. Beyond the regular group, one of jazz’s boldest, Lacy undertook duo projects with Potts, Ran Blake, Waldron and Evans, together with Monk and Herbie Nichols tributes Regenerations, Change Of Season and The ICP Orchestra Performs Nichols - Monk alongside Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink, the same pair who joined him on Dutch Masters.
Lacy also ranked among modern jazz’s foremost exponents of unaccompanied soprano saxophone. After encountering Anthony Braxton’s solo performances he began shaping his own soprano repertoire in the early 1970s and pursued it through successive concerts and recordings that include the notable Hocus Pocus, The Kiss and Remains. Extraordinarily productive, he issued more than 100 albums under his own name and appeared on roughly as many again as a sideman; paradoxically, Itinerary in 1991 marked his first release leading a big band.
An exceptional composer and improviser, Lacy endures as one of the era’s pivotal jazz figures whose music promises lasting value. He remained, in addition, simply a captivating performer. As Graham Lock observed in 1983, “There are few sounds as distinctive or as lovely as Lacy’s soprano, with its comet-trails of bare bones lyricism.”
Albums
