Steve Lacy, prolific performer, composer, and educator who brought global recognition to the modern soprano saxophone, died of liver cancer at age 69 on June 3^rd in Boston. The recipient of a 1992 MacArthur “Genius” grant, Lacy is often mentioned in the same breath as Sidney Bechet and John Coltrane, and frequently topped the critics’ and readers’ polls of Down Beat and Jazz Times as the top soprano sax player. Tracing his career is like tracing the full development of jazz from Dixieland to avant garde; his performances have ranged from solo to big band, from Monk tributes to song cycles and projects incorporating dance and poetry.

Born Steven Lackritz in New York City, Lacy began music studies on the piano and then moved on to clarinet before settling on the soprano sax for good in the mid 1950s. Looking back (Downbeat, July 2004), he cited the purchase of a Duke Ellington album at age 12 as the catalyst for his interest in jazz, with Bechet’s solo on “The Mooche” sparking his love of the soprano sax. He studied with Cecil Scott and attended the Schillinger and Manhattan Schools of Music, playing Dixieland around NYC with Rex Stewart, Red Allen, Hot Lips Page, and Peewee Russell, among others, before jumping styles to join Cecil Taylor, including performances at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival. Said Lacy later of his days with Taylor, “We were an attack quartet (sometimes quintet or trio), playing original, dangerously threatening music that most people (musicians, organizers, club-owners, and critics) were offended by, doing everything they could to hold us back and prevent us from getting work. In the six years I worked with Cecil Taylor (1953-59), I received an excellent education, not only in jazz, but also in politics and strategy.”

Playing with Taylor, Gil Evans, Mal Waldron and Jimmy Giuffre in the late 1950s, Lacy also began studying Monk, eventually working in Monk’s quintet for a few months in 1960. With Roswell Rudd, Lacy then led his own quartet devoted to Monk’s music, and Monk has been his muse throughout his career. Lacy described Monk’s music as perfect for soprano sax, "not too high, not too low, not easy, not at all overplayed and most of all, full of interesting technical problems."

By the mid-60s he had turned to avant garde, formed a quartet (later quintet) with Enrico Rava, and settled in Europe with his wife, Swiss violinist/vocalist Irene Aebi. After a few years in Rome, he moved to Paris, as his music evolved from free form to incorporate electronics, experimental sounds and language. Said Lacy of this period, “We all went into revolutionary mode, and abandoned all precepts (melody, harmony, rhythm and form), taking the music to the brink of destruction, and afterwards returning to completely refreshed traditional limits (melody, harmony, rhythm and form), but not defensively, only driven by the search for freedom, independence (interdependence really, jazz being collective) and creative invention, no defense being necessary.”