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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
Improvisation
Composition
Seconds
Decide
Jazz
Music
Time

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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Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work.
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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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Jazz is like wine. When it is new it's only for the experts, but when it gets older everybody wants it.
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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 heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.
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I still love the whole history of Jazz. The old things sound better than ever.
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Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.
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The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.
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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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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.
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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.
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Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.
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Circumstances can be very important. Find the right people to work with.
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You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others.
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Register is very important. Music sounds best in a certain register.
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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.
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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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Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo.
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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.
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