Editing Steve Lacy (saxophonist) (section)

==Europe and sextet==
Lacy's first visit to Europe came in 1965, with a visit to Copenhagen in the company of [[Kenny Drew]]; he went to Italy and formed a quartet with Italian trumpeter [[Enrico Rava]]<ref name="AMG"/> and the South African musicians [[Johnny Dyani]] and [[Louis Moholo]] (their visit to [[Buenos Aires]] is documented on ''[[The Forest And The Zoo|The Forest and the Zoo]]'', ESP, 1967). After a brief return to New York, he returned to Italy, then in 1970 moved to Paris, where he lived until the last two years of his life. He became a widely respected figure on the European jazz scene, though he remained less well known in the U.S.

The core of Lacy's activities from the 1970s to the 1990s was his sextet: his wife, singer/violinist [[Irene Aebi]],<ref name="VW77"/>{{rp|272}} soprano/alto saxophonist [[Steve Potts (jazz musician)|Steve Potts]],<ref name="JF04">{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/jun/10/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries1|title=Steve Lacy|last=Fordham|first=John|date=June 10, 2004|work=The Guardian|access-date=January 25, 2017}}</ref> pianist [[Bobby Few]], bassist [[Jean-Jacques Avenel]], and drummer Oliver Johnson (later [[John Betsch]]).<ref name="AMG"/> Sometimes this group was scaled up to a large ensemble (e.g. ''Vespers'', Soul Note, 1993, which added Ricky Ford on tenor sax and [[Tom Varner]] on French horn), sometimes pared down to a quartet, trio, or even a two-saxophone duo. He played duos with pianist [[Eric Watson (musician)|Eric Watson]]. Lacy also, beginning in the 1970s, became a specialist in solo saxophone; he ranks with [[Sonny Rollins]], [[Anthony Braxton]], [[Evan Parker]], and [[Lol Coxhill]] in the development of this demanding form of improvisation.

Lacy was interested in all the arts: the visual arts and poetry in particular became important sources for him.<ref name="AMG"/> Collaborating with painters and dancers in multimedia projects, he made musical settings of his favourite writers: [[Robert Creeley]], [[Samuel Beckett]], [[Tom Raworth]], [[Taslima Nasrin]], [[Herman Melville]], [[Brion Gysin]] and other Beat writers, including settings for the Tao Te Ching and [[haiku]] poetry. As Creeley noted in the Poetry Project Newsletter, "There's no way simply to make clear how particular Steve Lacy was to poets or how much he can now teach them by fact of his own practice and example. No one was ever more generous or perceptive."