- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Duke University Press (25 Oct 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0822338262
- ISBN-13: 978-0822338260
- Product Dimensions: 24.4 x 16 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,559,390 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Review
"A phenomenal interviewee... Whether [Steve Lacy] was making bold predictions on the future directions of the music, describing his fascinating projects, laying forth broad challenges to himself and other artists, or making succinct observations of the musical world he inhabited, Lacy's words proved to be almost as interesting as his music." Down Beat, on inducting Lacy into the Down Beat Hall of Fame "I have always admired Steve's perseverance and commitment to perfecting his art ... He is the prime example of someone who has fought for artistic integrity."--Sonny Rollins, Jazz Magazine (Paris) "[An] excellent collection ... This well-illustrated and attractively produced book collects interviews with Lacy and presents them chronologically... This book is a fitting tribute to one of the supreme masters of that moment."--The Wire, OCtober 2006
Product Description
"Steve Lacy: Conversations" is a collection of thirty-four interviews with the innovative saxophonist and jazz composer. Lacy (1934-2004), a pioneer in making the soprano saxophone a contemporary jazz instrument, was a prolific performer and composer, with hundreds of recordings to his name. This volume brings together interviews which appeared in a variety of magazines over forty-five years, from 1959 until 2004. Conducted by writers, critics, musicians, visual artists, a philosopher, and an architect, the interviews indicate the evolution of Lacy's extraordinary career and thought.Lacy began playing the saxophone at age sixteen, and was soon performing with Dixieland musicians much older than him. By nineteen, he was playing with pianist Cecil Taylor, who ignited his interest in the avant-garde. He eventually became the foremost proponent of Thelonius Monk's music. Lacy played with a broad range of musicians, including Monk and Gil Evans, and led his own bands. A voracious reader and the recipient of a MacArthur 'genius' grant, Lacy was particularly known for setting to music literary texts - such as the "Tao Te Ching", and the work of poets including Samuel Beckett, Robert Creeley, and Taslima Nasrin - as well as for collaborating with painters and dancers in multimedia projects.Lacy lived in Paris from 1970 until 2002, and his music and ideas reflect a decades-long cross-pollination of cultures. Half of the interviews in this collection originally appeared in French sources and were translated specifically for this book. Jason Weiss provides a general introduction, as well as short introductions to each of the interviews and to the selection of Lacy's own brief writings that appears at the end of the book. The volume also includes three song scores, a selected discography of Lacy's recordings, and many photos from the personal collection of his wife and longtime collaborator, Irene Aebi.
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First Sentence
By the time of his first interview, less than a decade after he picked up the soprano saxophone, Lacy had been playing all over New York and traversed the full range of jazz history. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
By the time of his first interview, less than a decade after he picked up the soprano saxophone, Lacy had been playing all over New York and traversed the full range of jazz history. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
Anyone interested in jazz, as player or listener, will thoroughly enjoy this book. Steve Lacy was one of the most important artists of the 20th century, and I use the work artist here as I think "musician" simply seems too narrow a description for him. The interviews and writings contained in this volume provide a variety of perspectives; a verbal history of the American and European music scene of the era; insights into the challenges of improvisation, band leading and composing; a discussion of how collaborative artistic endeavours in various media can be successfully achieved; a humorous and at times laconic reflection on the personal journey of an individual trying to carry on his art.
Steve Lacy really comes out in the pages of this work, and anyone who has just a passing interest in music will find this a highly informative, educational, inspirational, and entertaining read. Just like Steve Lacy's music.
Steve Lacy really comes out in the pages of this work, and anyone who has just a passing interest in music will find this a highly informative, educational, inspirational, and entertaining read. Just like Steve Lacy's music.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
A Petite Fleur for Steve Lacy
27 Aug 2006
Format:Paperback
It's hard to get excited about a book that consists entirely of interviews conducted over years by a wide variety of scribes, and yet STEVE LACY CONVERSATIONS emerges as a triumph for editor Jason Weiss. It's nearly as good as Kenneth Goldsmith's edition of inter views with Warhol that came out a few seasons ago (I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR). Like Warhol, Lacy was sometimes interiewed by hacks who sometimes muddled or confused his message, and a few times here you have to imagine what Lacy really might have replied before the tape or whatever got transcribed incorrectly. That makes for some fun though, and it forces the reader into working out the sense, allowing the reader to become involved in the process as well.
Weiss tells us that he became interested in Lacy's music primarily through his, and Irene Aebi's, connections to Brion Gysin, whose READER Weiss edited a while back. For nearly two decades Lacy and Gysin were co-conspirators, a "songwriting team," Weiss suggests, like Rodgers and Hammerstein or Greenwich and Barry. Lacy had an equally long, well longer, intimacy with the work of his mentor, jazz pianist Cecil Taylor, and then, from 1960 to his own death, he was frequently a pilgrim to the shrine of Thelonius Monk, whose work he revered beyond all others.
His wife, Irene Aebi, had many connections in the beat world, and their last LP together, BEAT SUITE, is a song cycle using texts from many canonical Beat poets (and such allied figures as Jack Spicer) whom Aebi knew from her youth. French Canadian musicians interviewed Lacy in 1976 in Montreal and New York; their interview is one of the best here, with some probing, intelligent questions designed to elicit thoughtful replies. This is es[pecially good on Lacy's Russian heritage (he was born Steven Lackritz in New York in 1934). Rare and unusual photographs decorate and illuminate the work here, including one of Lacy blowing it out in his beautiful ivy-laden Paris garden in the late 1990s--the paradise he left a little bit later to take that last job in Brookline, Massachusetts. His hairline travels between photos but he's always the same appealing, deeply American man of the world.
"When I used to work with Monk," he recalled, "he used to say, 'Let's lift the bandstand.' That's magic, man, when the bandstand levitates. I didn't know how to do it--but I knew what he was talking about. Old dreams but they're still valid." (From a 1979 interview with Brian Case.) Well, we know that somehow in the process, Lacy did discover how to "lift the bandstand," and somehow I suspect he knew how all along, even before the revelations of Taylor, Gysin, Aebi or Monk.
Weiss tells us that he became interested in Lacy's music primarily through his, and Irene Aebi's, connections to Brion Gysin, whose READER Weiss edited a while back. For nearly two decades Lacy and Gysin were co-conspirators, a "songwriting team," Weiss suggests, like Rodgers and Hammerstein or Greenwich and Barry. Lacy had an equally long, well longer, intimacy with the work of his mentor, jazz pianist Cecil Taylor, and then, from 1960 to his own death, he was frequently a pilgrim to the shrine of Thelonius Monk, whose work he revered beyond all others.
His wife, Irene Aebi, had many connections in the beat world, and their last LP together, BEAT SUITE, is a song cycle using texts from many canonical Beat poets (and such allied figures as Jack Spicer) whom Aebi knew from her youth. French Canadian musicians interviewed Lacy in 1976 in Montreal and New York; their interview is one of the best here, with some probing, intelligent questions designed to elicit thoughtful replies. This is es[pecially good on Lacy's Russian heritage (he was born Steven Lackritz in New York in 1934). Rare and unusual photographs decorate and illuminate the work here, including one of Lacy blowing it out in his beautiful ivy-laden Paris garden in the late 1990s--the paradise he left a little bit later to take that last job in Brookline, Massachusetts. His hairline travels between photos but he's always the same appealing, deeply American man of the world.
"When I used to work with Monk," he recalled, "he used to say, 'Let's lift the bandstand.' That's magic, man, when the bandstand levitates. I didn't know how to do it--but I knew what he was talking about. Old dreams but they're still valid." (From a 1979 interview with Brian Case.) Well, we know that somehow in the process, Lacy did discover how to "lift the bandstand," and somehow I suspect he knew how all along, even before the revelations of Taylor, Gysin, Aebi or Monk.
one of the most inspiring music books ever
24 Feb 2012
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I probably have spent 40 years reading music books of every size and shape - histories, bios, photo books, you name it - but this relatively small volume ranks among the very best I've ever read. Lacy was a musical genius, and time will only enrich that status. But he was also one of the most articulate explainers of art. On nearly every page of this book, there's some concise and beautiful statement about music or about the making of art that will have you saying, "I gotta remember this." He's funny, humble, gracious, and outspoken. No matter whether you like (or even know about) his music -you'll learn a lot by spending a few hours of reading time with Steve Lacy. Jason Weiss has done a great service for all of us and a great honor to Lacy's memory by preserving these conversations.
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