Paul B on Steve Lacy

[james harrigan]

from this week's New Republic:

REMEMBERING STEVE LACY.
Saxophone Solo
by Paul Bennett

Only at TNR Online
Post date: 10.19.04
The soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, who died in June at the age of 69, lived in Paris for 30 years, but his real home remained the vibrant New York of the 1950s--Jackson Pollock's unpredictable splashes, the streetwise verse of Frank O'Hara, the arabesques of Merce Cunningham's dancers. Lacy's quirky, elegant jazz took something from each. He treated everything from Dixieland to the fiercest avant garde as if it were all part of one coherent stream. He set poems to music and played for dancers, open to any situation. Age never dampened his conviction that music could be integral to other arts; a few years ago he played a solo show beside a Lichtenstein sculpture in front of the Seagram Building. As the evening light danced off the building's dark windows, and Park Avenue traffic provided counterpoint, the sculpture and his music became one.

Lacy made some 250 records. The one I happened to first stumble on was Capers, a 1979 live date with the bassist Ronnie Boykins and the drummer Dennis Charles. Lacy generally avoided the quartet format dominant in jazz; the trio, without the harmonic hegemony of the piano, worked better for him. When he did play with a pianist, such as Mal Waldron, with whom he made many recordings, he preferred the intimacy of a duo. But his tunes could be played in any format--solo, duo, trio, big band, with or without voice--which gave him a flexibility rare in a jazz musician.

The tunes on Capers are sinuous and serpentine, the improvisations based not on chord changes but on the actual melodies themselves--their edge, their skin, their implications. The flesh--the harmonic side--is just hinted at (in the interaction with the bass lines), and does not dominate as it does in jazz standards. The names of the tunes--"Quirks," "Capers," "The Crunch"--are wryly onomatopoetic. Lacy's tone is dry and crisp, indebted to neither the lush madness of Coltrane's "sheets of sound," nor the whorehouse wail of Sidney Bechet's giant vibrato. Lacy never plays too fast; his nimble acrobatics always seem genuine, never sleight of hand. He is Rabelais filtered through Beckett; Joyce poured into a glass of haiku.

Like Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, Lacy forged a language that drew from jazz yet resisted its autocratic conventions. His was a language of odd intervals, a huge palette of sounds--more than any jazz musician before or after him--and a highly nuanced attention to rhythm. Lacy played briefly with the pianist Thelonious Monk in the '60s, and Monk's tunes became a core part of his repertoire, along with the work of Mingus and Ellington. With the trombonist Roswell Rudd, Lacy was the first to regularly play Monk's music, which he refracted through the prism of his own developing style. This work was a hint of things to come. After settling in Paris, he composed steadily, working with both a small coterie of musicians who grew to know his work well, and others--such as the guitarist Derek Bailey and the saxophonists Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker--with whom his musical language dovetailed.

What sets Lacy apart from other jazz composers is his devotion to the song form. Influenced by everyone from Weill to Webern, Lacy's settings of poetry borrow from both jazz and classical music yet are beholden to neither. His output--over 100 settings of poets such as Robert Creeley, Jack Kerouac, and Bob Kaufman--makes him something of a jazz Schubert. Like Schubert, Lacy wraps a mantle around the words, adding a new layer of meaning with melodies that enhance and illuminate them, as if the music were his own gloss of the text. At gigs without a vocalist--always his wife, the singer Irene Aebi--Lacy would simply read the poem before launching into the tune. His voice deployed the same shades of nuance that his horn did.

Lacy never stopped performing, continually documenting his music in the studio and polishing it on the road. "I have to be out of Paris to be of Paris," he told me when I visited him there ten years ago, horn in hand, for a lesson. Dapper, with reading glasses dangling from a cord around his neck, Lacy greeted me with a smile. His apartment in the Marais was filled with books, records, and memorabilia. The walls were covered with photos and prints, and a piano was tucked into a corner of the room. The curtains were open, but the afternoon light was muted and serene. Lacy's voice was warm, and his speech tended toward aphorisms not unlike those of the painter Georges Braque, whose terse, incisive ideas ("We will never have any peace," "The present is perpetual") comprised for him small pools reflecting light on creativity. They got under Lacy's skin, and he made them his own by setting 14 of them to music, to be played by a soprano and an alto saxophonist, and recording them on an album called Tips. Braque's notebook, Lacy wrote in the liner notes, was "advice to himself as an artist, and to all other artists. Braque's sayings were an enormous help to me, in my own development, and as I kept repeating these things to myself, over a period of many years, they began to seem like tunes."

Lacy's Tips, like Braque's speech, is simple in structure and form--most cuts are two or three measures long--which makes them especially challenging to the improviser. Lacy favors wide intervals, and many of the Tips are clever sequences of, say, fourths and fifths. "Illustrated by the improvised sections," he wrote, "the result is a sort of 'casebook cantata' and a working examination into the nature of free play, in this case between two saxophonists, but also about preparation and spontaneity, and of music and information." Preparation and spontaneity might well sum up Lacy's musical ethos, a balance between the rigid formalism of bop and the unrestrained liberty of free improvisation. He adheres to neither credo, but instead weaves strands from both into his music.

A Zen-like clarity--a wry approach to the ineffable--was at the core of his art. "It's all about intervals," Lacy told me that afternoon in Paris. And yet, he said, these building blocks--atoms of musical "information"--are overlooked, deemed simplistic, pushed aside for the supposedly more important complexities. "An interval is already a word, as well as a world," Lacy said. To explore that world, he created an exercise to grapple with intervals, which he explained to me in some detail. "First, notate all the intervals up to a tenth possible on the saxophone, from each note on the horn--that is, from low B-flat to high E, above which there is only one interval, a half-step to F. Then cut them off the page one by one. Throw them in a bowl, mix them up. Pull them out and paste them on a new page in random order. Then find a way to work with them."

Unlike other major jazz musicians, Lacy founded no movement, left no school, and never achieved the iconic status of a Miles Davis or a John Coltrane--though in the end, his achievement is on equal footing with theirs. Among musicians, even his most fervent admirers acknowledge that his highly personal approach could never be imitated--though perhaps a poet or a painter may try someday.

Paul Bennett is a writer and musician who lives in New York City.

[mke]

Don't know if he still comes around, but I found this a very enjoyable read.

[Pete C]

Nice piece from somebody who really knows Lacy's music.

I don't know how this sentence got by the copy editor though:

At gigs without a vocalist--always his wife, the singer Irene Aebi--Lacy would simply read the poem before launching into the tune.

Though I suppose it could be read as a zenlike statement about Irene's presence even in her absence...

[Gary Sisco]

Good one, Paul.

[Brian Olewnick]

Excellent job, Paul.

[Ennis Snavely]

Wonderful. I need to get "Tips".

[Enforcer]

Excellent, Paul!

[Ron Thorne]

Very nice piece. I read it last night and was impressed.

[walto]

Bravo!

[Derek Taylor]

Damn fine read, Paul. Wondering if you’ve considered writing a book on Lacy (for all I know, you already have one in the hopper).

[Uli]

Not bad, Paul B.

It could be improved a notch by leaving this out:

"Preparation and spontaneity might well sum up Lacy's musical ethos, a balance between the rigid formalism of bop and the unrestrained liberty of free improvisation. He adheres to neither credo, but instead weaves strands from both into his music."

to hear bebop as rigid formalism is one thing, to declare it the credo of the likes of Diz, Bird & Bud etc and is not the way I would express it.

[iris]

I just returned from Boston where I performed in Steve's memorial concert at NEC. I worked with Steve when I went to school there. It was a beautiful experience. Our ensemble included a trio of vocalists (David Devoe, Nicole Edgecombe, and myself, Julie Hardy) and a rhythm section and soprano saxophonist (of course). We performed "Tina's Tune".
We loved working with Steve so much that we have formed a Steve Lacy Ensemble here in NYC. We will be performing "The Way" Cycle and other works by Steve that have not yet been recorded. His wife Irene is very supportive of this.
Please let me know if you are interested in learning more about our group......the thing that is beautiful about this group of musicians and what I think is crucial is that we have all worked with Steve so we know how to play his music well because we learned it directly from the source.
If you want to be notified about our performances please let me know and we can add you to our mailing list. You can also checking out my website - I'll be posting our gigs there. www.juliehardy.com.
thanks

[james harrigan]

that sounds very cool, iris/Julie. Please keep us updated, and post your gig info at JC, OK?

[Il Anto]

Hello everybody,

Since Paul is unable to post here anymore, he asked me to give thanks for the kind words.

[Captain Hate]

The New Republic made an excellent choice in Paul B to write about Lacy. It always bothered me that I didn't think he ever received any of the recognition that he deserved. In fact I used to get infuriated that the local "alternative press" idiots wouldn't cover his rare shows (and referred to him as Lacey when they were mindlessly parroting a press release). The only consolation I took was that a lot of young people were at the last show of his I saw. I wonder how many of the New Republic's readers will be at all familiar with him. Did Ken Burns even mention him?? Please tell me no; I have a driving need to hate Burns as much as possible.

[Uli]

Originally Posted by Il Anto

Hello everybody,

Since Paul is unable to post here anymore, he asked me to give thanks for the kind words.

What did I miss? Did he get axed?

[Pete C]

I don't think "inability" is the operative concept.

[Mike Schwartz]

If I have it right, Paul B. is hangin' in some run down funky neighborhood with Chris A...

Originally Posted by Il Anto

Hello everybody,

Since Paul is unable to post here anymore....

What does that mean?

[Ron Thorne]

Originally Posted by Il Anto

Since Paul is unable to post here anymore, he asked me to give thanks for the kind words.

Apparently, I'm not the only one confused by this language. Unable? Why? Is Paul's computer on the fritz? Is he sick?

I just checked, and Paul B is still registered at Jazz Corner.

Please advise, Il Anto. Or, better yet ...Paul.

[Brian Olewnick]

Paul split JC a month or two ago. I forget the thread, but he made his intentions clear.

[Jimmy Cantiello]

Yeah, I remember that thread. Paul was being very condescending in his remarks, his usual "tact", and didn't like it when a few of us called him on it. I think the straw that broke the camel's back was when I told him to get off his high horse. He chose to ride off into the sunset.....................

[Ron Thorne]

Jimmy, your avatar is beginning to scare me, pal. I like the food ones better.

~Chef Thorne

[Steve Reynolds]

great peice

please say hi to Paul for me, Anthony

[Jimmy Cantiello]

Originally Posted by Ron Thorne

Jimmy, your avatar is beginning to scare me, pal. I like the food ones better.

~Chef Thorne

I'll change it in due time, my friend, in due time, heh heh heh heh.........

[Uli]

Originally Posted by Brian Olewnick

Paul split JC a month or two ago. I forget the thread, but he made his intentions clear.

Paul's last words can be read in the "Imploded with content" thread. Which I find quite amusing.

[Il Anto]

Hey guys, I'm sorry that I was unclear. When Paul announced that he was gone for good, he immediately scrambled his password making it impossible for him to log into his account. He has no hard feelings toward anybody, he just wanted to stick to his word as he always hated when people made announcements of leaving then just ended up returning a couple days later.

[Steve Reynolds]

good for him


I will always love my friend, Paul B


Steve R

[Ron Thorne]

Originally Posted by Il Anto

Hey guys, I'm sorry that I was unclear. When Paul announced that he was gone for good, he immediately scrambled his password making it impossible for him to log into his account. He has no hard feelings toward anybody, he just wanted to stick to his word as he always hated when people made announcements of leaving then just ended up returning a couple days later.

"Since Paul is unable to post here anymore, he asked me to give thanks for the kind words." - Il Anto

That's cool. I just had difficulty with the word "unable", I guess. Apparently, he was "able" but "unwilling". That's more honest, isn't it?

[shrugs]

They always come back.
I bet he's lurking.........