Steve Lacy
There is a saying that the temple stood for many years before anyone noticed it was there—and then it disappeared. All that remained was a glade where the musicians came to play and exchange their wares in all weathers.
Jazz may have been born in cities but it has always returned to the glade, its song and spirit to rage beautiful. And as a jazz musician, Steve Lacy has come to play.
Four recent albums offer an impressive account of the diverse contexts in which Lacy has brought his unique sound to bear. Although he is frequently recorded—with his own as well as other people’s bands—he manages to be relatively disregarded by the dominant jazz media, whether because he’s an American expatriate in Paris or because his sound is too unique for some. Whatever the reason, these albums should mark him as an artist of major importance, particularly the newest of these, Songs, a collaboration with artist Brion Gysin who wrote the lyrics. This album more than ever unites the whole of Lacy’s playing experiences.
In Lacy’s “get-well card” to Monk, the solo performances of Eronel, he plays Monk’s tunes as if he’s everywhere at once, taking the head at its proper count, then developing, extending, and reconnecting the lines. This album has the feel of someone who is listening to the beauty of the music and walking inside it. On “Epistrophy,” for instance, Monk’s composition is so welded to Lacy’s spirit that there is no distinguishing the two. As in the other tunes here, Lacy endlessly refracts their light.
In “Eronel” and especially the longest solo, “Skippy,” there is curiosity from the start. He questions every corner and doorway he can find in the tunes. But with a knowledge of them that dates back to the late ‘50s when he was one of the only musicians other than Monk to be playing and recording the composer’s tunes. In “Ba-lue Boli-var Ba-lues-are” and “Ask Me Now,” the corresponding moods he takes on are resoundingly delivered. In paying homage (and another visit) to Monk in this record, Lacy has inadvertently given a new integrity to the soprano saxophone.
With Capers, Lacy is reunited with the excellent drummer Dennis Charles, who first worked with Lacy in Cecil Taylor’s quartet of the mid-‘50s and later in the saxophonist’s all-Monk-repertoire quartet with Roswell Rudd around 1963. The album also features the late bassist Ronnie Boykins, with whom Lacy had never previously recorded. The compositions are extensively treated in their New York concert performance and the musicians are accorded their equal and rightful solo space.
As on “The Crunch,” the heads display an interesting crossroads between Lacy’s earlier Monk schooling and the later and highest development to date of his own personal lyricism in Songs. Introduced by Charles’s thundering statement of the melody, “The Crunch” with its knocking rhythms proves the efficacy of Lacy’s titles. The solos themselves, and the choreography of the solos, are richly varied in their mutual daring, and in a way reflective of the title piece, playful: there’s the insistent swordplay of the tune challenging itself, foot-tappingingly.
On this date, “the piece” and “the solos” seem more evenly balanced in their relative importance. In the spareness of the music’s angled lines, worthy of Monk’s sensibilities, Lacy finds the perfect quotient for his chosen limits. Also, Lacy is not working with his regular group or repertoire, so there is the abandon of expression of a group which meets perhaps but once.
The themes are often surprisingly sweet, as in the calypso-like “We Don’t.” Yet time here is more spatial, more flexible, so the playing seems more liquid. The sprung and spiraling “Kitty Malone” is song-like enough to bring to mind the haunting journeying of the later “Nowhere Street” on the Gysin date. And “Bud’s Brother” lumbers along blues-like, while providing an open field for Boykins’s constantly probing solos. In a word, the music swings like a chameleon, and the musicians have more liberty.
Still, on The Way, Lacy’s regular group does their freest version yet of “Dreams.” With the limits of a song, especially with the carefulness of a Gysin song, and through the freedom it achieves, Lacy’s music dwells a long time in the listener’s mind; he’s obviously a thinker. Furthermore, the very special use of repetition that Gysin employs in his work corresponds splendidly with Lacy’s own shaping of form. And Gysin’s lyrics on this song perfectly convey the tune that came to Lacy in a dream.
But, above all else, this disc marks the first complete recorded performance of Lacy’s six-song cycle based on Lao-Tzu, The Way or Tao. The piece has taken over twenty years to evolve, though the text itself dates back more than two thousand years. And The Way establishes Lacy as a spellbinding writer of songs.
Irene Aebi’s voice is strong and confident here, particularly on “Bone” where it hits a resonance from which all the instruments find their impetus. Lacy and saxophonist Steve Potts seem to be virtually of one mind in their solos and duets, complementing each other in a music that is greater than its parts (“Existence”) or weaving separate faces of a kindred spirit (“Name”). Oliver Johnson’s work is as usual sensitive to Lacy’s special subtleties, while constantly alert; he has an ear for the speech of drums that goes beyond rhythm, as in his opening solo on “Life on Its Way.” And Kent Carter’s bass remains as the tendons by which the collective playing reaches and turns. His plucked and arco interplays with Aebi’s cello fuse a dense but resilient net for Potts’s hurtling solo on “The Way”; equally, Carter colors and deepens the music in a supportive role, as when he accompanies Aebi’s fine violin solo on “Dreams.”
The song cycle, Lacy’s first large work, intuitively conveys the depth of its sources: it is not a flashy pool but a great well reflecting the world—one keeps coming back to it. And the group here seems crystallized as never before—in what has turned out to be the last record this lineup did together.
On Songs, Lacy’s revamped group blazes a startlingly new trail, creating music of an ethereal and enduring beauty, cutting a broad swath across most of contemporary music in its soul and vision, chartered by lyrics of a hard brilliance.
Gysin, who was thrown out of the 1935 Paris Surrealist drawings show at the age of eighteen by André Breton for his independent spirit, is not only a painter but also known as one of the fathers of sound poetry. He has influenced countless composers, painters, and poets in the cross-media venturing of his ideas.
The tunes in the songbook are remarkably diverse, as are the occasions which led Gysin to write the lyrics. “Nowhere Street” is the oldest, the only song left from an unproduced 1949 musical he wrote about the real life of the man Uncle Tom’s Cabin was based on; the first two “Permutations” are from his earliest experiments in sound poetry with his 1959 permutation poems; “Gay Paree Bop” was written after a last-minute request for song lyrics for the Lacy group’s 1980 American tour.
Throughout these songs, Aebi’s voice is chillingly precise; she is almost other-worldly at times. The album is a real tribute to the qualities of her voice, the music molded to her singing. She takes it places probably no other singer could take it, and Lacy in his writing knows this.
He may have learned embellishment and swing from Dixieland, duration and intensity from Cecil Taylor, angularity and conciseness from Monk, but where does his lyricism come from ? It seems to be thoroughly his own, and here he most fully blends everything together.
Songs manages to dwell on the edge of various musical genres: new wave, popular and theatrical song (especially Kurt Weill), different eras of jazz. It dazzles in its valences, but never stops swinging. Listening to Lacy’s own spoken-sung vocal with Aebi on “Blue Baboon,” one can’t help but smile.
As for the group, it seems as if Bobby Few has always been there, particularly on “Keep the Change.” Like a tinkle of glass, like a laugh, like a giraffe poking his head around, Few’s piano constantly draws out hidden implications in the tunes. On “Permutations,” where the horns with their set of notes undergo the same changes as the words, the piano spills everywhere, punctuating, underlining, loosening the seams. And Potts is as ever flawless.
Special mention should be made of Gysin’s role in addition to that of lyricist. On “Luvzya,” his tour-de-force geared sagely and attentively by Johnson, Gysin launches into a recitation that is more than theater, more than a crazed genius for rhyme—it’s like the whole movie, but not fettered by the screen. And his performance of the permutations is uniquely suited to them: he makes them make sense. To Hat Hut’s credit, all the lyrics are printed inside the innovative packaging. And they are also releasing Gysin’s own album, Orgy Boys, including songs he wrote for his screenplay of longtime collaborator William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, performed by Gysin himself.
It’s been Lacy’s intention as a songwriter to elevate the quality of jazz lyrics; with Gysin he has found a fertile ground. Aebi’s voice and Gysin’s words serve him well; he hears inside them both. Thanks should go to Hat Hut for sticking by him. Songs is probably the most important album of new music in quite some time.
* * *
Ballets (Hat Art, 1982)
published in Jazz Forum (Warsaw) 88 (June 1984)
At last, Steve Lacy’s The 4 Edges has been recorded in its entirety by his full group. The piece was written in the mid-‘70s and portions of it have appeared intermittently on recordings by smaller formations. Reworked for various size groups and used as the score for Douglas Dunn’s ballet Cycles, with dancers from the Paris Opera, the composition is shown here in full flower after a long gestation. On the other disc, Hedges, a group of pieces for piano and sax is presented here from a solo performance with a dancer. Lacy is a delver into essences, whether conceptual, elemental, or as ever, in his expanding menagerie (with “Squirrel,” “Fox,” and “Rabbit” on Hedges), animal. Hear how they run.
* * *
published in Jazz Forum (Warsaw) 88 (June 1984)
At last, Steve Lacy’s The 4 Edges has been recorded in its entirety by his full group. The piece was written in the mid-‘70s and portions of it have appeared intermittently on recordings by smaller formations. Reworked for various size groups and used as the score for Douglas Dunn’s ballet Cycles, with dancers from the Paris Opera, the composition is shown here in full flower after a long gestation. On the other disc, Hedges, a group of pieces for piano and sax is presented here from a solo performance with a dancer. Lacy is a delver into essences, whether conceptual, elemental, or as ever, in his expanding menagerie (with “Squirrel,” “Fox,” and “Rabbit” on Hedges), animal. Hear how they run.
* * *
Futurities
published in Jazz Forum (Warsaw) 93 (April 1985) & Coda (Toronto) 201 (May 1985)
The long-awaited world premiere of Lacy’s ballet based on twenty poems by Robert Creeley took place at the packed Lille opera house on November 15 and 16 as part of the Festival de Lille. Lacy’s ideas spellbind more than ever in this piece: the very high caliber of the musicians, the poet, the dancers, the painter, and the lighting designer combines with such force that the viewer and listener is almost a little stunned.
As ever with his songs, Lacy has mulled over the poetry’s inherent music to spin from it melodies that remain, that echo through the singing mind with a particular precision. Lacy’s own music comes out differently each time, according to the poet he is hearing. Yet always, no matter how his songs may vary from each other, one recognizes the traditions he has come through.
Futurities, for Lacy, is a series of marriages, among the different media and artists involved. The songs are about life and living, simple things, in Creeley’s special wistfulness. Accordingly, the contributions of each medium are simple, but shimmering nonetheless. And none more so than Kenneth Noland’s huge translucent chevron that he painted expressly for this show; poised like an altar in the middle of the stage, the Noland canvas comes alive under John Davis’s inspired lighting, changing hues and shifting moods dramatically.
Dancing together for the first time, Douglas Dunn and Elsa Wolliaston welded a strange beauty from their own contrasting styles. Where they went with the dance was always surprising, though there was something familiar, almost ritual, about their movements, simple gestures. There seemed an inner grace and logic to their interactions, non-narrative yet right on the poems, pointing ways.
The poet is well served by Irene Aebi’s voice too, since the precision she has developed in singing Lacy’s music enables her to swing Creeley’s syntax through all its rich ambiguities. Her singing carries the lead throughout the ensemble of eight instrumentalists; comprised of Lacy’s regular group, the ensemble also includes Jef Gardiner replacing Bobby Few on piano for this work, as well as intermittent collaborators George Lewis and guitarist Barry Wedgle, plus harpist Gyde Knebusch. With the welcome new textures of the harp, the group flies; in the open field Lacy’s music has woven, each musician adds his turns to the song.
Not long after these performances, the ballet was further performed in the south of France and the songs were subsequently recorded for a record on Hat Art, due out in spring. When I had first heard a few of these songs, I thought the poems so beautiful I ran out and bought the book. You get the picture. Look for it. Lacy’s settings of Creeley’s poems are a landmark in the marriage of jazz and poetry.
* * *
published in Jazz Forum (Warsaw) 93 (April 1985) & Coda (Toronto) 201 (May 1985)
The long-awaited world premiere of Lacy’s ballet based on twenty poems by Robert Creeley took place at the packed Lille opera house on November 15 and 16 as part of the Festival de Lille. Lacy’s ideas spellbind more than ever in this piece: the very high caliber of the musicians, the poet, the dancers, the painter, and the lighting designer combines with such force that the viewer and listener is almost a little stunned.
As ever with his songs, Lacy has mulled over the poetry’s inherent music to spin from it melodies that remain, that echo through the singing mind with a particular precision. Lacy’s own music comes out differently each time, according to the poet he is hearing. Yet always, no matter how his songs may vary from each other, one recognizes the traditions he has come through.
Futurities, for Lacy, is a series of marriages, among the different media and artists involved. The songs are about life and living, simple things, in Creeley’s special wistfulness. Accordingly, the contributions of each medium are simple, but shimmering nonetheless. And none more so than Kenneth Noland’s huge translucent chevron that he painted expressly for this show; poised like an altar in the middle of the stage, the Noland canvas comes alive under John Davis’s inspired lighting, changing hues and shifting moods dramatically.
Dancing together for the first time, Douglas Dunn and Elsa Wolliaston welded a strange beauty from their own contrasting styles. Where they went with the dance was always surprising, though there was something familiar, almost ritual, about their movements, simple gestures. There seemed an inner grace and logic to their interactions, non-narrative yet right on the poems, pointing ways.
The poet is well served by Irene Aebi’s voice too, since the precision she has developed in singing Lacy’s music enables her to swing Creeley’s syntax through all its rich ambiguities. Her singing carries the lead throughout the ensemble of eight instrumentalists; comprised of Lacy’s regular group, the ensemble also includes Jef Gardiner replacing Bobby Few on piano for this work, as well as intermittent collaborators George Lewis and guitarist Barry Wedgle, plus harpist Gyde Knebusch. With the welcome new textures of the harp, the group flies; in the open field Lacy’s music has woven, each musician adds his turns to the song.
Not long after these performances, the ballet was further performed in the south of France and the songs were subsequently recorded for a record on Hat Art, due out in spring. When I had first heard a few of these songs, I thought the poems so beautiful I ran out and bought the book. You get the picture. Look for it. Lacy’s settings of Creeley’s poems are a landmark in the marriage of jazz and poetry.
* * *
The Window
published as liner notes in Steve Lacy, The Window (Soul Note, 1988)
There is a purity and lyrical grace reached only by the road of experience.
Never mind treatises, and never mind a rehash of his curriculum vitae. Steve Lacy has got his credentials (buy another of his more than sixty records to read about them). What you hear is experience. Here is a player who keeps his curiosity always fresh in his music and he’s been playing all his life.
This album, The Window, is about light. Traveling light as a trio but also illuminations. From the teachers and players he has known Lacy forges his own light. His tunes are like little jewels triggering reflections, or refractions, while they spin in your hand. They stick to your thoughts and light the way home, like that window at the end of the path.
Experience is also what gives such a deep equilibrium to the playing of this trio. Oliver Johnson and Jean-Jacques Avenel have a long tenure with Lacy’s music as regular members of his sextet. This is their first album as a trio, and the sureness of their intuition can’t be faked. They are used to playing as six, so the trio is a crystallized form of the regular band. It’s a showcase, Lacy says, for the band as well as the tunes.
A breadth of vision, a certain spaciousness, characterizes Lacy’s music. One could say he has become thoroughly international after more than twenty years living abroad, but it is not simply a question of borders. The improvisor’s art consists in making space where before there was none, in drawing a window where you didn’t even know was a house. As if he has taken the freedoms of the 1960s and compressed them into every quirky tune he writes—in fact, mostly they are songs—Lacy’s simple structures allow him to go way outside. And just when you think the musicians may have lost you, there goes the tune again.
The title piece on this record, “The Window,” “is the basis of the trio,” says Lacy. “Its form is like a window, in and out, and it has four sides.” It is a portrait of Max Roach—another in Lacy’s series dedicated to artists as sources, Luminaires, concerning optics—and continues the line of his last trio date for Soul Note five years earlier, The Flame.
But the light travels, and it folds into a dance. “Flakes” is their ice-skating tune, followed by their hot clicking rumba, “A Complicated Scene.” In the perfectly spiraling triangle of their voices they achieve a strange buoyancy. Note the fine palette of Oliver Johnson’s rhythmic orchestrations. You can really hear him, how he widens out the sound, articulating a definite momentum while splashing the music full of sparks.
“Twilight” features Lacy and Johnson in a duo. A companion piece to “The Window,” it is a portrait of Art Blakey. The drumming is at its most open-bodied, spare and wind-voiced, dealing with essences, like Lacy’s soprano in its solo, which breathes off of the notes as though a shakuhachi inhabited the horn. (And well it might, for his musical trajectory has ranged from Monk and Cecil Taylor to Watazumido So, Brion Gysin, and many more, plus a long list of writers and painters who have been important to him.)
“The Gleam” sings of what’s inside. Previously recorded by the sextet, it is a song celebrating drink and good company based on an old Chinese poem. The harmonic framing of Jean-Jacques Avenel’s bass lines casts a rich tension in the music. As a moving ground to the melodies or springing as a foil to Lacy’s leads, he likes the big fat lows of the bass. Lacy’s tone on soprano is often quite rounded, especially on the songs where he seems to hear the voice that sings the words. “Retreat” has also been recorded as a song, by his septet, and concerns not a shrinking back but rather a departure towards a place of peaceful light.
You cannot help but look in at the window. And there, if you keep looking, you will find the flame.
* * *
published as liner notes in Steve Lacy, The Window (Soul Note, 1988)
There is a purity and lyrical grace reached only by the road of experience.
Never mind treatises, and never mind a rehash of his curriculum vitae. Steve Lacy has got his credentials (buy another of his more than sixty records to read about them). What you hear is experience. Here is a player who keeps his curiosity always fresh in his music and he’s been playing all his life.
This album, The Window, is about light. Traveling light as a trio but also illuminations. From the teachers and players he has known Lacy forges his own light. His tunes are like little jewels triggering reflections, or refractions, while they spin in your hand. They stick to your thoughts and light the way home, like that window at the end of the path.
Experience is also what gives such a deep equilibrium to the playing of this trio. Oliver Johnson and Jean-Jacques Avenel have a long tenure with Lacy’s music as regular members of his sextet. This is their first album as a trio, and the sureness of their intuition can’t be faked. They are used to playing as six, so the trio is a crystallized form of the regular band. It’s a showcase, Lacy says, for the band as well as the tunes.
A breadth of vision, a certain spaciousness, characterizes Lacy’s music. One could say he has become thoroughly international after more than twenty years living abroad, but it is not simply a question of borders. The improvisor’s art consists in making space where before there was none, in drawing a window where you didn’t even know was a house. As if he has taken the freedoms of the 1960s and compressed them into every quirky tune he writes—in fact, mostly they are songs—Lacy’s simple structures allow him to go way outside. And just when you think the musicians may have lost you, there goes the tune again.
The title piece on this record, “The Window,” “is the basis of the trio,” says Lacy. “Its form is like a window, in and out, and it has four sides.” It is a portrait of Max Roach—another in Lacy’s series dedicated to artists as sources, Luminaires, concerning optics—and continues the line of his last trio date for Soul Note five years earlier, The Flame.
But the light travels, and it folds into a dance. “Flakes” is their ice-skating tune, followed by their hot clicking rumba, “A Complicated Scene.” In the perfectly spiraling triangle of their voices they achieve a strange buoyancy. Note the fine palette of Oliver Johnson’s rhythmic orchestrations. You can really hear him, how he widens out the sound, articulating a definite momentum while splashing the music full of sparks.
“Twilight” features Lacy and Johnson in a duo. A companion piece to “The Window,” it is a portrait of Art Blakey. The drumming is at its most open-bodied, spare and wind-voiced, dealing with essences, like Lacy’s soprano in its solo, which breathes off of the notes as though a shakuhachi inhabited the horn. (And well it might, for his musical trajectory has ranged from Monk and Cecil Taylor to Watazumido So, Brion Gysin, and many more, plus a long list of writers and painters who have been important to him.)
“The Gleam” sings of what’s inside. Previously recorded by the sextet, it is a song celebrating drink and good company based on an old Chinese poem. The harmonic framing of Jean-Jacques Avenel’s bass lines casts a rich tension in the music. As a moving ground to the melodies or springing as a foil to Lacy’s leads, he likes the big fat lows of the bass. Lacy’s tone on soprano is often quite rounded, especially on the songs where he seems to hear the voice that sings the words. “Retreat” has also been recorded as a song, by his septet, and concerns not a shrinking back but rather a departure towards a place of peaceful light.
You cannot help but look in at the window. And there, if you keep looking, you will find the flame.
* * *
The Door
published as liner notes in Steve Lacy, The Door (RCA Novus, 1989)
Some musicians have a sound that is so distinct you could recognize them anywhere once you’d heard them. Who knows from what well of the soul that voice is formed, but soon as it appears you know it will speak truly, always itself, and always bearing news. A wellspring, like Steve Lacy.
After more than thirty-five years playing music, Lacy has achieved a clarity on his soprano saxophone wherein his entire career might be glimpsed. Yet he manages to keep the edge of risk intact when most players would have long been coasting on their merits. With The Door he throws open the whole house.
This album could almost serve as an anthology of Lacy’s work. His own tunes here evenly span two decades. They all retain the angularity of line, the probing solos, and big colors characteristic of his music. Although he hasn’t just gone picking through the past. The door is a gift, an invitation to dwell inside awhile. Wherever you go you need a door, no matter the landscape.
Lacy varies the repertoire more than ever before. It is the first time his regular band has recorded other people’s music. Alternating original tunes with rarely performed pieces by past masters, he shows an unerring sense of balance in his choices. The band’s sound joyously encompasses a multiplicity of times while the compositions date back through the 1950s, with the lovely ballad “Forgetful.” Seldom has Lacy treated a tune so downright sweetly.
Though his sextet since the 1980s remains the basis for this recording, that unit in itself never quite appears. Instead, Lacy joins with his usual collaborators in different settings. On each tune he recasts the challenge—in the delicate fire of the duets, the crisply driving trio, the commanding quintet numbers, up to the lush power of the enlarged group—rendering even familiar material from unexpected angles.
Of course, to get inside you have to knock, and so begins the title tune. The newest of the original pieces here, written in 1987, “The Door” is dedicated to Franz Joseph Haydn. One of the quiet details about Lacy’s compositions is that they all bear dedications, to other wellsprings. (On his sheet music, at the end of each tune, he attaches a small picture with the name to whom he offers the tribute.) The eighteenth-century composer, he points out, liked to employ knocking rhythms in some of his work, and used toy sounds among other instruments.
Recent as the piece is, “The Door” is classic Lacy. The modified song structures of Lacy’s music, echoing the oldest traditions, contain in their simplicity the greatest flexibility. The quintet develops the theme through a sequence of repeated phrases, laid out rather like lines of verse, leading to the improvised section. This is founded on the melodic and rhythmic implications of the theme, and the improvisation carries as long as it will hold. Then the theme is repeated and they close.
That’s probably the most basic of structures, old as the hills. Jazz and most other music were founded on songs. But the history of jazz also concerns a freeing up of the instruments, as of time itself naturally. There are few musicians anywhere who demonstrate such freedom and control as Lacy. Much as glass might concentrate sunlight, he takes the song form to frame and direct all the exploded freedom that musicians of his generation discovered in the 1960s. And his work swings.
If one speaks of sources for Lacy, the most evident is Monk. Many of Monk’s brightly challenging tunes have been recorded by Lacy on other occasions, though not “Ugly Beauty.” For suppleness of line and nuance, and learning the delights of a tune, Monk was Lacy’s finishing school. He held a lot of keys to the mystery of music, how to relate one thing to another, how to hear it.
The band glistens on the waltz, recorded by Monk himself just once. The musicians in the sextet have been with Lacy for as long as twenty years now. They are remarkable for the individuality of their playing and how thoroughly they hear each other in every context. As with all the pieces by other composers here, Lacy’s group warmly embraces the time in which the tune was made while making it completely their own.
Lacy’s sculptural sense helps to highlight each musician, clearest in the duets with members of the rhythm section. Jean-Jacques Avenel, whose forceful bass playing stitches the band together, switches to the sanza (thumb piano) on “Clichés,” the band’s African postcard. As he does elsewhere with the bass, he sets the tune in motion, working around it, delimiting the terrain, shaping tension and texture. Last recorded by Lacy’s septet five years earlier, the duo shows that like the rest of the group they know how to derive from the sparest elements the greatest fullness.
Oliver Johnson’s articulate drumming, ever fertile with its precise shadings, teams with Lacy in a densely energized performance of “The Breath.” The oldest Lacy piece on this date, it originally formed part of his song cycle The Way, based on the Tao Teh Ching, and is dedicated to the late Gil Evans. As in the trio rendition before it of Bud Powell’s “Comin’ Up,” Johnson is subtle as a rushing stream, focusing all attention on the onwardness of the playing, filling out the space around Lacy’s charging horn, accenting it.
The same surely applies to Bobby Few’s waterwheels on the piano. He can do anything, and does, making it seem inevitable, perfect, indispensable to the music. With “Forgetful” he and Lacy surprise by settling into a ballad. Their playing glows like firelight in a darkened room. You’d think they always played this stuff.
From start to last another saxophonist is present on the album, Steve Potts. “He keeps me on my toes,” says Lacy, as in the fast neo-bop of “Blinks” with the quintet. Potts as well covers the entire history of the music in his horn. More blues inflected, equally exotic, his sound has been part of Lacy’s sound since the early 1970s. Together they weld wide harmonies, New Orleans-style interplay, and some of the most outside solos imaginable, landing impeccably on their feet.
The remaining member of the sextet, Irene Aebi, marks her only appearance on the closing tune. Since the late 1960s, she has usually been the human voice in Lacy’s band. “With her,” he says, “I’m capable of bringing words into the instrumental voices.” Here it is her violin that is heard, weaving about through the tapestry. It might be said she is represented in another way on this date, in parts of Lacy’s own playing on “Clichés” and “The Breath,” originally with Aebi singing lyrics.
There is one special guest: veteran Ellington drummer Sam Woodyard. The album culminates in the exulting richness of the Strayhorn-Ellington composition “Virgin Jungle,” and Woodyard turns the group not just into a septet but a thundering big band. The two drummers somehow spread out the sound. Woodyard had been living in Paris for a dozen years; he passed away a month after the recording.
Being the wordsmith that Lacy is, and the voracious reader, it must amuse him to see that what opens with “The Door” ends in “Virgin Jungle.” Words are often keys to his pieces. Thus, “Blinks” seems to fly at blinking speed, after dreamy “Forgetful.”
Steve Lacy makes himself at home in a large house. But that’s a long story. Words are not really what this is about. The joy is in the music.
Behold The Door.
published as liner notes in Steve Lacy, The Door (RCA Novus, 1989)
Some musicians have a sound that is so distinct you could recognize them anywhere once you’d heard them. Who knows from what well of the soul that voice is formed, but soon as it appears you know it will speak truly, always itself, and always bearing news. A wellspring, like Steve Lacy.
After more than thirty-five years playing music, Lacy has achieved a clarity on his soprano saxophone wherein his entire career might be glimpsed. Yet he manages to keep the edge of risk intact when most players would have long been coasting on their merits. With The Door he throws open the whole house.
This album could almost serve as an anthology of Lacy’s work. His own tunes here evenly span two decades. They all retain the angularity of line, the probing solos, and big colors characteristic of his music. Although he hasn’t just gone picking through the past. The door is a gift, an invitation to dwell inside awhile. Wherever you go you need a door, no matter the landscape.
Lacy varies the repertoire more than ever before. It is the first time his regular band has recorded other people’s music. Alternating original tunes with rarely performed pieces by past masters, he shows an unerring sense of balance in his choices. The band’s sound joyously encompasses a multiplicity of times while the compositions date back through the 1950s, with the lovely ballad “Forgetful.” Seldom has Lacy treated a tune so downright sweetly.
Though his sextet since the 1980s remains the basis for this recording, that unit in itself never quite appears. Instead, Lacy joins with his usual collaborators in different settings. On each tune he recasts the challenge—in the delicate fire of the duets, the crisply driving trio, the commanding quintet numbers, up to the lush power of the enlarged group—rendering even familiar material from unexpected angles.
Of course, to get inside you have to knock, and so begins the title tune. The newest of the original pieces here, written in 1987, “The Door” is dedicated to Franz Joseph Haydn. One of the quiet details about Lacy’s compositions is that they all bear dedications, to other wellsprings. (On his sheet music, at the end of each tune, he attaches a small picture with the name to whom he offers the tribute.) The eighteenth-century composer, he points out, liked to employ knocking rhythms in some of his work, and used toy sounds among other instruments.
Recent as the piece is, “The Door” is classic Lacy. The modified song structures of Lacy’s music, echoing the oldest traditions, contain in their simplicity the greatest flexibility. The quintet develops the theme through a sequence of repeated phrases, laid out rather like lines of verse, leading to the improvised section. This is founded on the melodic and rhythmic implications of the theme, and the improvisation carries as long as it will hold. Then the theme is repeated and they close.
That’s probably the most basic of structures, old as the hills. Jazz and most other music were founded on songs. But the history of jazz also concerns a freeing up of the instruments, as of time itself naturally. There are few musicians anywhere who demonstrate such freedom and control as Lacy. Much as glass might concentrate sunlight, he takes the song form to frame and direct all the exploded freedom that musicians of his generation discovered in the 1960s. And his work swings.
If one speaks of sources for Lacy, the most evident is Monk. Many of Monk’s brightly challenging tunes have been recorded by Lacy on other occasions, though not “Ugly Beauty.” For suppleness of line and nuance, and learning the delights of a tune, Monk was Lacy’s finishing school. He held a lot of keys to the mystery of music, how to relate one thing to another, how to hear it.
The band glistens on the waltz, recorded by Monk himself just once. The musicians in the sextet have been with Lacy for as long as twenty years now. They are remarkable for the individuality of their playing and how thoroughly they hear each other in every context. As with all the pieces by other composers here, Lacy’s group warmly embraces the time in which the tune was made while making it completely their own.
Lacy’s sculptural sense helps to highlight each musician, clearest in the duets with members of the rhythm section. Jean-Jacques Avenel, whose forceful bass playing stitches the band together, switches to the sanza (thumb piano) on “Clichés,” the band’s African postcard. As he does elsewhere with the bass, he sets the tune in motion, working around it, delimiting the terrain, shaping tension and texture. Last recorded by Lacy’s septet five years earlier, the duo shows that like the rest of the group they know how to derive from the sparest elements the greatest fullness.
Oliver Johnson’s articulate drumming, ever fertile with its precise shadings, teams with Lacy in a densely energized performance of “The Breath.” The oldest Lacy piece on this date, it originally formed part of his song cycle The Way, based on the Tao Teh Ching, and is dedicated to the late Gil Evans. As in the trio rendition before it of Bud Powell’s “Comin’ Up,” Johnson is subtle as a rushing stream, focusing all attention on the onwardness of the playing, filling out the space around Lacy’s charging horn, accenting it.
The same surely applies to Bobby Few’s waterwheels on the piano. He can do anything, and does, making it seem inevitable, perfect, indispensable to the music. With “Forgetful” he and Lacy surprise by settling into a ballad. Their playing glows like firelight in a darkened room. You’d think they always played this stuff.
From start to last another saxophonist is present on the album, Steve Potts. “He keeps me on my toes,” says Lacy, as in the fast neo-bop of “Blinks” with the quintet. Potts as well covers the entire history of the music in his horn. More blues inflected, equally exotic, his sound has been part of Lacy’s sound since the early 1970s. Together they weld wide harmonies, New Orleans-style interplay, and some of the most outside solos imaginable, landing impeccably on their feet.
The remaining member of the sextet, Irene Aebi, marks her only appearance on the closing tune. Since the late 1960s, she has usually been the human voice in Lacy’s band. “With her,” he says, “I’m capable of bringing words into the instrumental voices.” Here it is her violin that is heard, weaving about through the tapestry. It might be said she is represented in another way on this date, in parts of Lacy’s own playing on “Clichés” and “The Breath,” originally with Aebi singing lyrics.
There is one special guest: veteran Ellington drummer Sam Woodyard. The album culminates in the exulting richness of the Strayhorn-Ellington composition “Virgin Jungle,” and Woodyard turns the group not just into a septet but a thundering big band. The two drummers somehow spread out the sound. Woodyard had been living in Paris for a dozen years; he passed away a month after the recording.
Being the wordsmith that Lacy is, and the voracious reader, it must amuse him to see that what opens with “The Door” ends in “Virgin Jungle.” Words are often keys to his pieces. Thus, “Blinks” seems to fly at blinking speed, after dreamy “Forgetful.”
Steve Lacy makes himself at home in a large house. But that’s a long story. Words are not really what this is about. The joy is in the music.
Behold The Door.