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Steve Lacy has never allowed his lips to stray from a soprano saxophone throughout his 40-year career. Other jazz musicians aren't so loyal, switching from soprano to alto, baritone or tenor sax whenever the mood strikes. "It's like a person with two wives. Or three. Or five," Lacy says from a tour stop in Southern California. So why not join in on the polygamy? "It's always challenging," he says of the soprano sax, a straight horn that looks more like an overgrown clarinet than a stereotypical saxophone. "It's unfinished and it's infinite. There's always more to learn, to try out and to struggle with, because it's a treacherous instrument. It can kick you in the teeth, or it can kick you in the ass." Fortunately for Lacy, the soprano sax also kick-started his career. He began as a clarinetist, but it was with the saxophone that he became a protégé of Cecil Taylor and Thelonious Monk. These and other elder jazz greats schooled Lacy in everything from Dixieland to avant-garde jazz, and he's gone on to play all over the world and record dozens of albums, including the recent Bye-Ya, which sent him on the current 30-city tour with bassist Jean-Jacques Avenel and drummer John Betsch. Born in New York in the late '30s, Lacy followed in the American tradition of jazz musicians who established themselves on this side of the Atlantic, then relocated to Europe, where clubs, record labels and music fans were more appreciative of their style. After some moving around, including an 18-month sojourn in South America, Lacy settled in Paris in 1969, and he still lives there today. "In New York in the '60s, jazz was underground. I had to work days, also, above the ground," he says. "So I was getting tired of running up and down like that, knocking myself out. In Europe, there was a chance to make a living, and also there were good musicians and places to play and record companies and radio stations. It was another world." In Paris, Lacy refined his style, exploring and expanding the tones from his soprano sax. He also made lifelong associations with a number of musicians who've played in Lacy-led octets, sextets, duos and currently, a trio. He's worked with Avenel for 25 years, and Betsch has drummed with Lacy on and off for eight years. Lacy speaks reverentially of his sidemen, saying, "I'm very lucky to have them both." Despite his success as an expatriate musician in Paris, Lacy has never turned his back on the experiences that shaped him during his New York period; he even collaborated with his old friend Gil Evans on the masterful arranger's final album, 1987's Paris Blues. Lacy also continues to cite Monk as one of his most essential influences. The saxophonist recorded a full album of the pianist's work, Reflections, in 1958. Two years later, Monk invited Lacy, then 26, to join his band for a 16-week run, expanding a quartet to a quintet. "That was a very important experience for me," Lacy says. "He was generous enough to see that I needed to work with him, that I was so much into his music that I had to have a first-hand place in it." Besides the musical training, Monk taught Lacy the important jazz lesson of humility. "Don't play for yourself, play for others," Lacy says, as if it's his mantra. "I learned that from Monk. He said, 'Make the drummer sound good.'" Lacy took the advice to heart, and he's been making drummers, bassists and even other saxophonists sound good for 40 years. Unfailingly loyal to his sidemen and his sax, Lacy speaks of playing jazz in existential terms. "It's visceral, it's corporeal, it's life and death," he says. "It's the public and the other musicians. Those are the the two principal things: the public and the musicians you're playing with. And every note is a matter of life and death." |
