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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
Decide
Jazz
Music
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Improvisation
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Seconds

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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Bamboo is not a weed, it's a flowering plant. Bamboo is a magnificent plant.
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Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.
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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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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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Register is very important. Music sounds best in a certain register.
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Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.
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The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.
Steve Lacy
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I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.
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.
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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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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Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work.
Steve Lacy
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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.
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.
Steve Lacy
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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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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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A young pianist & composer who has demonstrated an exceptional creativity, in both his playing & his writing, as well as showing us all, his very strong commitment & motivation to aim for high musical goals. Talent like his is rare.
Steve Lacy
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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.
Steve Lacy
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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.
Steve Lacy