Steve Lacy, an Adventurer Who Travels With Soprano Saxophone

Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy feels that the best jazz is made by the players most willing to take chances--masters, he says, of “brinkmanship.”

And it’s a description that perfectly suits Lacy, as well, a player whose entire career--once past a youthful training period with New Orleans music--has taken place on the cutting edge of jazz.

On Tuesday at the Jazz Bakery, in the first night of a brief, two-night appearance in Los Angeles, Lacy, working with longtime associates Jean Jacques Avenel on bass and John Betsch on drums, revealed a few of the many adventurous aspects of his music. The most obvious was his longtime affection for the music of Thelonious Monk, dating back to a superb and, sadly, under-recorded quartet he led in the early ‘60s (with trombonist Roswell Rudd), an ensemble whose entire repertoire was based upon Monk tunes.

The affection is clearly still present, and Lacy included several Monk numbers in his opening set, as well as several works of his own that clearly revealed Monkish qualities--attractive melodies filled with leaping intervals, disjunct rhythms and piquantly dissonant harmonies. And Lacy’s deep understanding of Monk’s music reached into the improvisations as well. Understanding that the Monk themes are complete entities, rather than simply melodies with chords, his solos were spun from the whole cloth of the compositions, moving spontaneously and intricately through the fabric of the music.

Although the set began a bit listlessly--a reflection, perhaps, of the Lacy trio’s intense travel schedule--within a few numbers the group was up and running. Lacy’s long, lean, angular lines (tinged with elements from both Sidney Bechet and Lester Young), his warm-textured sound and his consistently imaginative musicality drew repeated applause from a surprisingly (for a Monday night) large crowd. What a shame that this important and too little acknowledged jazz artist could only make a two-night stop in the Southland.