Steve Lacy

[Tom Storer]

There are enough Lacy fans around here to make this a thread that will last.

I'll start with the news that he has released, or will soon since it's being advertised in the April edition of the French jazz magazines, "The Beat Suite," on Emarcy. This was apparently recorded a couple of years ago but was delayed while copyright problems were worked out, for it is a poetry-and-music affair celebrating the beat generation. Lacy, George Lewis, Jean-Jacques Avenel and John Betsch play; Irene Aebi handles the reading or singing, I dunno, of ten texts by Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, Kaufman, Rexroth, and Jack Spicer. And maybe others, I'm not sure since I'm basing this on a review, not having heard the record yet. The review likes it, says it is slow and solemn, tragic, comparable to funeral lamentations.

Lacy and beatnik poetry... a natural. I'm going to get it real soon.

[Bill Barton]

Be sure to check out the recent hatOLOGY reissues of the Steve Lacy/Roswell Rudd Quartet's School Days and The Steve Lacy 6's We See. The former is particularly wonderful, with Henry Grimes and Dennis Charles in top form.

[stevebop]

Tom: Your loss, our gain. As you know Steve has recently taken up residence in Boston with his wife, Irene Aebi.

He is teaching at The NE Conservatory of Music and is performing all over town.

A couple of months ago he and Irene gave a concert in NEC's beautiful Jordan Hall. The first half was Steve solo on ten of Monk pieces and then ten of his own. After a brief intermission Irene joined him on stage for some works from "Beat Scene."
The Boston audience loved them and they in turn loved their reception. They looked at each other often and seemed to be saying, "This is nice. We made the right decision coming to Boston!"

They will doing something similar in a couple of weeks at The Museum of Fine Arts. It's being billed as "Ten of Dukes" and some material from the "Beat Scene" is also promised.

Recently he was the featured soloist the Boston Jazz Composers Allience Orchestra (I'm not sure that is the accurate title. Someone out there help?). I missed that gig.

Then...on May 2 and 3 Steve does a duo gig with Danilo Perez at The Regatta Bar in Cambridge. I have been in negotations with their mangament(s) to allow my station, WGBH-FM to record this gig for later rebroadcast locally on GBH and nationally on NPR's JazzSet. Keep your fingers crossed.

[Tom Storer]

Steve,

Lacy made a solo record called "Ten of Duke's + 6 Originals," recorded in Japan in 2000. You can order it on the web from the Lacy-dedicated "Senators" site. Lois's rules prohibit adding the link to a commercial site, so let me explain that its URL lacks the usual three w's. After the word "senators" comes the word "free," then the country code "fr", all these separated by periods.

[Tom K]

Does anyone know for sure? Last thing I heard was that Steve Lacy had already given up the US again and returned to Europe. Is this more than just an unqualified rumour?

[Paul B]

ui

[Other Steve]

Originally posted by Tom Storer
I'll start with the news that he has released, or will soon since it's being advertised in the April edition of the French jazz magazines, "The Beat Suite," on Emarcy. This was apparently recorded a couple of years ago but was delayed while copyright problems were worked out, for it is a poetry-and-music affair celebrating the beat generation. Lacy, George Lewis, Jean-Jacques Avenel and John Betsch play; Irene Aebi handles the reading or singing, I dunno, of ten texts by Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, Kaufman, Rexroth, and Jack Spicer.

This band will be doing some limited summer engagements in the U.S. with the material from the new album. I already knew that they'd be at the Iridium in NYC on August 5-10, but the Senators website also lists dates at the Outpost Performing Space in Albuquerque, NM (August 11) and the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe, NM (August 12). Can't imagine that they wouldn't also take the opportunity to swing out to the Bay Area, but these are the only dates confirmed so far.

[Other Steve]

Originally posted by stevebop
Then...on May 2 and 3 Steve does a duo gig with Danilo Perez at The Regatta Bar in Cambridge. I have been in negotations with their mangament(s) to allow my station, WGBH-FM to record this gig for later rebroadcast locally on GBH and nationally on NPR's JazzSet. Keep your fingers crossed.
According to Senators (again), this will be preceded by two performances in Vermont on April 29 and 30, no towns or venues listed, followed by a U.S. tour by the duo from May 5 to May 15, with details forthcoming on those as well.

You can also find details of an April run in NYC that I hadn't heard anything about previously, at St. Mark's Church April 3-6 with a harpsichordist and some dancers (the latter including Lacy himself, if the site is accurate). And there's a Lacy/Aebi date in Portland, Maine on April 26 featuring 10 of Dukes plus excerpts from the Beat Suite.

[Bill Barton]

Originally posted by Other Steve
According to Senators (again), this will be preceded by two performances in Vermont on April 29 and 30, no towns or venues listed, followed by a U.S. tour by the duo from May 5 to May 15, with details forthcoming on those as well.

You can also find details of an April run in NYC that I hadn't heard anything about previously, at St. Mark's Church April 3-6 with a harpsichordist and some dancers (the latter including Lacy himself, if the site is accurate). And there's a Lacy/Aebi date in Portland, Maine on April 26 featuring 10 of Dukes plus excerpts from the Beat Suite.

What, pray tell, is the "Senators" website? I certainly hope that Seattle is included on the U.S. tour, as Lacy is one of the few living masters I've not in heard in concert, and absolutely want-have-need to do so!

[Other Steve]

Originally posted by Bill Barton
What, pray tell, is the "Senators" website? I certainly hope that Seattle is included on the U.S. tour, as Lacy is one of the few living masters I've not in heard in concert, and absolutely want-have-need to do so!
Bill, Senators is Lacy's own official website. Tom Storer's second post, above, tells you how to get there. Once there, click on "home page" and then "live" to get to the concert itinerary.

[Bill Barton]

Thanks! Guess I misssed that... Oops.

[Paul B]

poi

[Jim Dye]

'Findings' is outstanding. One could easily apply Lacy's method(s) to the study of any instrument. It also has much to offer non-musicians as well. Get it if you can find a copy.

[Paul B]

df

[Other Steve]

If anyone was thwarted in his or her quest to obtain a copy of Lacy's excellent 2001 trio disc The Holy La on the (now defunct?) Freelance label, I see that it's just been reissued this month on Sunnyside.

[Dan G]

In the thread about the Guelph Jazz Festival, someone mentioned that Lacy is ill, but didn't expand on it. What's wrong with him? How long have people known, etc?

[Paul B]

sd

[Dr Dave]

This is the best Lacy discography I've found yet:

Steve Lacy Discography (http://home.arcor.de/nyds-exp-discogs/lacy.htm)

[Rob C]

This is probably old news to most of the peeps around here, but I have to give props to School Days, which I just picked up (thanks to Drimala's sale). Wonderful music!

I don't think I've been disappointed by a Lacy record yet, he's one of the greats.

[LeMo]

Got news from Lacy's close friend about his health.
Seems that the man is, effectively, very ill.
Let cross our fingers that he will, anyway, escape to *that* dreadfull sickness.

[Paul B]

fo

[Cem]

That is shitty news. Lacy has given so much to generations of music lovers. I hope he's around and healthy for a good long while.

[gonzo]

another of the greats i would love to see sometime.

[me wag]

Well, I hope it's wrong but I Just heard from the Bay Area list-serv that Jon Raskin recently spoke to Steve Lacy and he is not well. As most of you know, Lacy has cancer. Could be days, even hours...

[Vince Kargatis]

Hope this isn't too true.

Anyway, Mone - can you merge this thread with the primary 'Steve Lacy' thread started by Tom Storer?

[Paul B]

fgiu

[moneyp]

Hope this isn't too true.

Anyway, Mone - can you merge this thread with the primary 'Steve Lacy' thread started by Tom Storer? Done.

And bummer! I just went through the wringer with a friend (http://www.jazzcornertalk.com/speakeasy/showthread.php?t=4730) who lost a six-month battle with cancer. The whole ordeal was so prolonged and unpleasant that, all things considered, when it comes to final exits, I'd rather get hit by a bus. My heart goes out to Mr. Lacy and his family and friends, and I hope whatever time he has left is pain-free and peaceful.

[rinkedinkus]

if anyone on this board can get a message to mr. Lacy, please tell him that he will dominate my prayers. he probably won't remember me, so just tell him it's from Paul in colorado who he met at the boulder show and who plays both string bass and saxophone. his reply was, "that's a wild combo!" i truly hope the "new therapies" alluded to in other posts work.
pcl

[Captain Hate]

I was afraid that the flurry of posts on this thread were for this reason. Here's hoping that this modern master can pull through.

[mke]

http://visionsong.blogspot.com/2006/06/steve-lacy.html

Today marks the second anniversary of the death of Steve Lacy, pioneer of the soprano saxophone, composer and teacher. As time passes, days like this become less overtly significant, but for me no more pleasant. Since his death Steve's music certainly continues- I've been to half a dozen gigs in the past year where Steve's music was featured without making a big deal of it, notably by Jeremy Udden and Monikah (for my money the best interpreter of Steve's songs who wasn't married to him). Dave Douglas likewise has incorporated some of Steve's work into his bands' book, and his "Blues for Lacy" on the new Meaning and Mystery is the best tune on the record. Hopefully, Steve's music one day will occupy a similar place in the "canon" (uggh, that word) that Monk's does.

One of the main attractions of attending New England Conservatory (well, one that wasn't named Brookmeyer) was the chance to study with Steve. I was not exactly a huge fan, but I knew that when it came to the soprano, he was THE guy. (From no less than Wayne Shorter- "Anyone who plays soprano orientates himself on Steve Lacy".) Ditto for the art of solo saxophone playing, along perhaps with Braxton and Evan Parker. The difference with Steve's solo playing was, Steve never abandoned song form, making records of solo performance of Monk or his own music rather than of improvisations.

Steve was a very particular guy. He did things a certain way, played a certain way, and wanted music the way he wanted it. Unlike a lot of particular people, however, he wasn't the least bit imposing or egotistical about it. If he didn't like something, he'd just shake his head and say "no, man, that part just isn't it! Doesn't go where it needs to go." (I remember his specifically saying that about the bridge to "The Nearness of You." Like the tune, just not the bridge) And that by itself was enough to make you want to fix it. In talking with Ryshpan, he said something similar. He was watching Steve rehearse a student group paying free. Every time Steve played, the music was very focused. When he stopped, it fell into chaos. Steve didn't have a center of musical gravity, he WAS the center of gravity.

Studying with Steve was a great joy, though it wasn't exactly studying in the traditional sense. After the first lesson, where he went over some very simple ways he "tamed" the soprano (which, coincidentally, still form the first chunk of any practice session for me), he said, "well, what do you want to do?" And that's how every lesson went. It wasn't that Steve was shy or selfish, he wanted you to fish out of him what you needed. So, I learned to come with a laundry list of questions, or tunes, and we'd go from there. Vivid memories- he said Monk had taken off the top of his piano, and put mirrors on the ceiling of his practice space, so he could look up and see what was happening as he played. He talked about playing a gig with Roscoe Mitchell where they played while walking around some kind of maze, doing certain things at certain locations. I still have tapes of some of the lessons, and I have to go back through them.

Steve died well before it was time. When I worked with him he was very active and only becoming more so, using NEC as a springboard for a lot of new work, and overdue recognition of some of his old work. His diagnosis of cancer the summer after I studied with him was a shock to everyone, and in the months before his death he'd seemed to have made a remarkable recovery, and was playing and writing as much and as strong as ever, which made his rapid decline and death that much more painful. Irene Aebi, his wife (and THE interpreter of his songs) says that he's still here, his music is still vital and his spirit is still strong. And I know what she means. But I for one, wish he were here, and miss him, especially today. There's so much more to say, but for now, onward, Steve.

[rollhead]

http://www.musicweb.uk.net/jazz/2001/May01/stevelacey.jpg

[Felix]

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0822338157.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
I got this from a friend for Christmas, and am reading it right now. In addition to being a master musician, Lacy appears to have been a very articulate and lucid person (read his comments on hard bop musicians in the discussion with Derek Bailey, for example). The funny thing is, many of those interviews were translated from the french, including some I already read in old issues of Jazz Magazine! There's even a fascinating 1976 interview he did in Montreal (when he recorded Hooky) with people involved in the visual arts. A great read so far.

[Paul B]

Weiss gave a talk at the NY Public Library about three weeks ago. He didn't tell me anything about Lacy I didn't already know, but it was cool to hear him speak, and the book is marvelous. Lacy was indeed one of the most lucid and articulate jazz musicians, and one of the few who could really talk about his music (and all of jazz) in an artful, poetic way. Any Lacy fan should have this book, and it's without a doubt one of the dozen or so great books about jazz.

[Paul B]

I've been digging this one immensely these past weeks; he was always ready for any challenge:

http://www.jazzloft.com/covers/hat631.jpg

[rollhead]

Thanks, Paul. I was hoping you, among others, would talk about what Lacy you were listening to now, and recommend something for me, who is just really now getting into him.

[Paul B]

This has also been getting a lot of play chez moi lately; Lacy and Waldron doing Ellington/Strayhorn tunes. Absolutely beautiful.

http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000004019.01._AA130_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg

[Felix]

rollhead, Morning Joy is certainly the Lacy album I play the most often, along with maybe School Days (with Roswell Rudd, all Monk tunes) and some later stuff (like Work (Sketch), Monk's Dream (Verve), The Holy La and Bye-Ya (both on Freelance)). And when my wife is not around, I usually play some heavier stuff, like the Scratching The Seventies set or The Gap. I think there once was a Lacy thread in the top ten section...

Here it is. (http://jazzcornertalk.com/speakeasy/showthread.php?t=6111&highlight=favorite+lacy)

[olie brice]

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0822338157.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg


I ordered this after finding out about it on this thread. Thanks! Its great.

[Jason Bivins]

Lately I've been enjoying the Atavistic release from 1975. I'm hoping that series (the Lacy "cassette archives") lasts.

I also picked up the book a couple months ago, surprised to see a Lacy volume in the local. Looking forward to digging in when I get a chance.

[shrugs]

Catch on Horo is a classic.

Biv's bud in NC that we shared beer and grub with hooked me up with before I even met him in person......

[Jason Bivins]

Yeah man, he's silly with Lacy. In fact he just laid a few boots on me a few months back.

[Paul B]

A nice tribute to Lacy by Alvin Curran in today's Times.

****

Laudatio for Lacy

ROME — For anyone who has not played the Dixieland standards — say, Muskrat Ramble, Fidgety Feet, Sister Kate, Black and Blue, Rampart Street and Moldy Fig Stomp (that one I made up) — there's no postmodern theory that can beat it. Derrida, a great jazz buff, as George Lewis assures me, knows where Les Orleans Nouveaux are, but Baudrillard, a sometime Americanophile, probably doesn't know the changes.

This much I got out of just reading a heart-rending, ear- and eye-opening book, " Steve Lacy, Conversations" (Duke Univ. Press, ed. Jason Weiss, 2006). It is a knock-out, an omelette aux fines herbes, an impeccable Lacy line of weird angles and implied major seconds. A bag full of Dixie, borscht-belt air, Cecil Taylor, Thelonious Monk, Gil Evans, Musica Elettronica Viva, the road, Rome, Paris, New York, Asia, Boston, backstage philosophy, painters, poets and corduroy. A life of roaming music lessons on stage and in the streets, in museums and at home — compositions all, that most professors have long excluded from their curriculae. No sour grapes nor sentimental journey in this book, just the pure straight dope.

Steve's erudite and smart words, thousands of which I exchanged with him over nearly four decades — like his crystalline notes, loony melodic contours, say-what repetitions, clusters containing the whole Ellington book, durations of long disappeared tribes, texts of every major poet, and dedications galore — sent me scrambling into my own scrapbook of similarly shared experiences …

When Steve entered the "studio" and music of the mythical group Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV) in Rome in 1968 it was as if the entire Mississippi Delta had washed in on us. As an ex-jazzer I could appreciate the pristine sound, the noble dignified inflection of his music, speaking in time, out of time, in repeatable syntax, in tongues, in Babe Ruth swats and almost inaudible overtone seductions. Here he was passing through a natural way-station, a grimy old metal factory in Rome's Trastevere quarter, which MEV in the form of Frederic Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum, Carol Plantamura, Allan Bryant, Jon Phetteplace, Ivan Vandor and myself had nearly brought down on our own heads by amateurishly widening a structural arch to connect two main rooms.

Rich with projects but low on cash, Steve, along with Irene Aebi, moved in and seldom paid the rent. Threatened with losing the place Teitelbaum and I went one day like two tough landlords to collect from them. Steve listened to all the arguments – how much we had sweated, invested and put into this place and looking down boyishly at his left foot, as he often did when offering major replies, said, "… Man, but you have no idea how many notes I put into these walls … millions!"

Steve came up with these life-saving retorts time and time again – poetic truths so simple and evident that even the sewer-rats applauded when he pronounced one. There was no comeback to the million notes in the walls, and as far as I know that locale, now the studio of a group of painters I know, is still alive with the remarkable sounds that Steve was producing daily in the millions – practicing on end to master the devilish soprano saxophone and to amalgamate his solid jazz self with the most open forms of musical liberation and creative anarchy that were the central themes of the day.

Playing with MEV, in exchange for our riffs on sheets of grating glass, amplified springs, and various found-objects, mixed with unearthly oscillators, Steve would simply drop a honked low A-flat or hang a heavenly mid-range long tone like he was causally hanging the wash on a line, then heave air-brakes like a Mack truck about to hit a goose caught by a hyena, or send out an anomalous phrase that sounded like all God's chillun' were singing in unison.

Against the MEV "casino" of sound it all made perfect sense, perfect "Arte Povera." But, the MEV theology which vaunted no leaders, no scores, no authority, no beginning or end, now had "melody" — certainly a bourgeois artifact to be avoided, but coming out of Steve's horn, a blessing and a remarkable alternative to the group's penchant to construct walls of earsplitting noise in crescendo. This time it was Steve Lacy who brought the whole history of music up the Tiber and dropped it in Via Peretti right in the laps of a bunch of Ivy League runaways.

There, Steve began his life as a composer in earnest. A born melodist crafting lines of incomparable invention, the beginnings of his endless songbooks – band-books of life. We all learned from him as he from us, and while Rzewski could speak ancient Greek and nouveau-Marx, Lacy was talking Cecil and Monk, Akhmatova and Gyson. The dialogue was convulsive as it was serene. MEV, the quintessential experimental composers' performing group was becoming via Lacy, and then with Garrett List (trombone), a meta-Dixieland band with roots in the mud of all the rivers, the Tiber to the Mississippi, the Rhine to the Ganges, the Jordan to the Yangtze. Pure flowing postmodern theory in practice. Maybe what Mozart would have invented – between fart jokes – had he been in our so-called utopian shoes.

Though Steve's music and life had other places to go, when called, he always made time to return to the unkempt MEV project between 1970 and 2002, often using it as a musical launching pad for his compositions to uncharted destinations. But in typical fashion as Rzewski wrote to me: "I remember phoning S. once, maybe sometime in the 80's, to tell him "There's another MEV gig!" From the other end of the line, after a moment's pause, came an agonized groan: "Ooh, Nooo…"

Never, other than in the coherence and clarity of the composer Cornelius Cardew, have I encountered a musical poet of such unruffled purpose as Steve. He lived on the same ill-famed streets where all music lives, the obscure and even dangerous ones, where you only emerge by disappearing into your own sounds late at night letting in their precious air and light

[TomVarner]

Thanks for sharing the Curran piece, Paul. Saw that it was there on day of publication, was later trying to find it, could not get on 'times select,' and could not get it at all in times archives today.

Was listening to "Monk's Dream" (Verve '99) and "Evidence" (w. Cherry, '61) , and "Trickles" (Black Saint, '76) recently---all sublime. Gets you out of a bad mood. Thank you Steve.

Hi to all---life is good in Seattle---will REALLY try to send in a 'report from Seattle" thread soon--meanwhile, Jack, 5, and Hope, 4, keeping me busy. Was just in Rotterdam, will be doing some solo gigs here, also Vancouver soon, also play here a lot with the Jim Knapp 14-piece wonderful ensemble--Jim is an unsung hero here in Seattle. Many great players here. best to all, tom varner

[Bill Barton]

Hi to all---life is good in Seattle---will REALLY try to send in a 'report from Seattle" thread soon--meanwhile, Jack, 5, and Hope, 4, keeping me busy. Was just in Rotterdam, will be doing some solo gigs here, also Vancouver soon, also play here a lot with the Jim Knapp 14-piece wonderful ensemble--Jim is an unsung hero here in Seattle. Many great players here. best to all, tom varner

Hi Tom...

Nice to "see" you here at JC. Hope to hear you play again around town soon. That "trio + one" concert at the Asian Art Museum awhile back was wonderful.

[shrugs]

Anyone heard the Lacy/Rudd Quartets that just came out on Cuneiform?

[Paul B]

Just bought it yesterday at DMG, but haven't had a chance to spin it. Will do so shortly and report back. I'm primarily interested in the long-lost demo cuts from the record that never materialized in the 60s.

[shrugs]

what's the track listing of the demos?

[Paul B]

They're the last four cuts on the second disc, two tunes by Monk and one by Cecil Taylor: Eronel, Tune 2, Think of One, Eronel.

[Jason Bivins]

And the rest is from 2000 or so, right? I have a nice boot from that period, so I'm looking forward to this.

[Paul B]

Yes; some dates from 1999 and 2004 (the latter at Iridium).

[Derek Taylor]

I'm looking forward to reading Paul B's thoughts on this set (the Biv's too, for that matter). But in the meantime, my own two cents is that it's pretty spectacular stuff! That those studio demos sat in the can for so long seems crazy to me. Cunningham isn't Grimes, but what's that they say about a gift horse's chompers?

[Paul B]

I've mostly just been replaying those four cuts from the 60s, as they're simply fantastic. Lacy's improvising was already much like it would be later as he explored Monk more deeply and created his own music: the solos are built on the repetition and variation of motifs; they generally eschew 16th and 32nd note lines; and they never stray from the tune like so many changed-based solos do. They capture Monk's humor and all his angles. I'm going to try to set aside some time to transcribe them in the coming weeks.

I saw Lacy every time he played at Iridium, and the cuts from those shows are good too, I just haven't gotten around to spinning them repeatedly.

[Jon Abbey]

wasn't sure what thread to bump, but the bulk of the new issue of Point of Departure is devoted to Lacy:

http://www.pointofdeparture.org

[Jesse]

wasn't sure what thread to bump, but the bulk of the new issue of Point of Departure is devoted to Lacy:

http://www.pointofdeparture.org (http://www.pointofdeparture.org/)


Thanks for that, Jon, I forget about POD every several months.What takes you to a jazz site?

Fwiw, in the serendipity of things, I came to JC in June of 2004, as Lacy had just died and I was following links of discussion about him. His passing was the occasion for my discovering JC.

[Jon Abbey]

Thanks for that, Jon, I forget about POD every several months.What takes you to a jazz site?

Bill sends me notices when they come out, but yeah, not usually much in my area of interest.

or did you mean here? :)

[Uli]

wasn't sure what thread to bump, but the bulk of the new issue of Point of Departure is devoted to Lacy:

http://www.pointofdeparture.org

By new, I assume you mean the May issue?

[Jon Abbey]

yes, the May issue, although some of it just went online this week. the next issue is supposed to be up in August.

[ericdevin]

A bit of shameless self-promotion here, but one of the most recent releases on my label (reviewed in the pointofdeparture issue mentioned) is a CD-R by Ideal Bread, covering '70s-vintage Lacy tunes. I don't usually post like this, but I am really happy with the disc.

[Jesse]

A bit of shameless self-promotion here, but one of the most recent releases on my label (reviewed in the pointofdeparture issue mentioned) is a CD-R by Ideal Bread, covering '70s-vintage Lacy tunes. I don't usually post like this, but I am really happy with the disc.


Also being discussed currently on Bagatellen.
http://www.bagatellen.com/archives/reviews/002049.html

[Felix]

A bit of shameless self-promotion here, but one of the most recent releases on my label (reviewed in the pointofdeparture issue mentioned) is a CD-R by Ideal Bread, covering '70s-vintage Lacy tunes. I don't usually post like this, but I am really happy with the disc.

I hope to get it in the mail any time soon! I really look forward to hearing this.