#ay

I've performed solo for 20 years now, but I don't do much of it, because if you only play alone, you go crazy and out of tune and play foolish music. ↗

— Steve Lacy

#because #crazy #foolish #go #i

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

#called #die #find #go #music

Risk is at the heart of jazz. Every note we play is a risk. ↗

— Steve Lacy

#heart #jazz #note #play #risk

Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention. ↗

— Steve Lacy

#interested #invention #just #more #mozart

We played for peanuts. But we did what we wanted to do, we heard what we wanted to hear, we performed what we wanted to perform, we learned what we wanted to learn. ↗

— Steve Lacy

#hear #heard #learn #learned #peanuts

What I learned with Cecil Taylor was strategy and survival and how to resist temptations and resist getting discouraged. ↗

— Steve Lacy

#discouraged #getting #how #i #learned

When I first started playing music in 1955, there was just a small body of people that knew it. It was a very esoteric type of thing. ↗

— Steve Lacy

#esoteric #first #i #just #knew

When I heard Monk in person in 1955, he was playing with a quartet in a small club. The place was full of musicians, but there was no public at all. ↗

— Steve Lacy

#full #heard #i #monk #musicians

Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo. ↗

— Steve Lacy

#original thing #quo #say #sort #status

You have to sound sad first of all, then maybe later you can sound good. ↗

— Steve Lacy

#first of all #good #later #maybe #sad