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

Steve Lacy

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Steve Lacy
Jazz
Music
Time
Improvisation
Composition
Seconds
Decide

More quotes by Steve Lacy

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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.
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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.
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Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.
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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.
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Register is very important. Music sounds best in a certain register.
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I've been working on the soprano saxophone for 40 years, and the possibilities are astounding. It's up to you, the only limit is the imagination.
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Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work.
Steve Lacy
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I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.
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The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.
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Bamboo is not a weed, it's a flowering plant. Bamboo is a magnificent plant.
Steve Lacy
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When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.
Steve Lacy
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Kenny G, I have to be grateful to him for proving that the instrument can be played all different kinds of ways.
Steve Lacy
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A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow.
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Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.
Steve Lacy
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What I learned with Cecil Taylor was strategy and survival and how to resist temptations and resist getting discouraged.
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I still love the whole history of Jazz. The old things sound better than ever.
Steve Lacy
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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
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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.
Steve Lacy
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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
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Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo.
Steve Lacy