Steve Lacy

Over the course of his career, soprano sax hero Steve Lacy embraced everything from the most straight-ahead bop to the most abstract experimentalism, but everything he did bore the unmistakable imprint of his lyrical grace. He was born Steven Lackritz in New York City on July 23, 1934, and turned pro while still in his teens. By 1956 he was recording with both pioneering avant gardist Cecil Taylor (on the pianist's milestone debut, Jazz Advance) and with cool-jazz bassist Whitey Mitchell. He released his first solo album, Soprano Sax on Prestige in 1958, but though he'd already been venturing outside the box with others, his solo releases remained mostly in bop territory until 1967, when he hooked up the legendary underground label ESP Disk for the free improv of The Forest and the Zoo. Though Lacy never abandoned bop for good, this led Lacy down an ever-expanded path that included decades of "out" sessions, starting with records like 1969's Epistrophy and 1971's Moon, both on renowned French avant-jazz label BYG Records. Lacy moved to Paris at the start of the '70s, and would remain there for most of his life. Like many great jazz innovators, he found a bigger audience for his music abroad than he did in his homeland. His most frequent co-conspirators on his European projects included his violinist wife Irene Aebi, pianists Mal Waldron and Bobby Few, and sax man Steve Potts, among many others. After bidding Europe goodbye with a series of concerts in Belgium, Lacy finally returned to the U.S. in 2002 and became a music educator. In his last years, much of his time was spent in his post at the New England Conservatory of Music. Though Lacy received a cancer diagnosis the following year, he kept on working for as long as his body would let him, and he finally passed on June 4 of 2004 in Boston, Massachusetts.