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Sweet suite
Steve Lacy does the Beats
BY JON GARELICK

When Steve Lacy brings The Beat Suite to the ICA next weekend, it will be merely the latest in a long string of works in which the saxophonist and composer has set poetry and other texts to music. In this case, it’s a suite of pieces based on the work of the Beat poets (it was released on CD last year by Sunnyside). Lacy and his quintet will perform the work March 12 and 13 at the ICA, recording the show live. On March 11, Lacy and his wife, the vocalist Irene Aebi, will perform with one of those poets, Robert Creeley, at MIT.

"Bob will read whatever he wants to read, and Irene and I will perform maybe five of our settings of Creeley’s words, from older works and recent things too," Lacy explains. "But you know, a lot of these settings, they come from 20 years ago — that’s when they were made, and performed all over Europe, and recorded. They’re not so well known here as songs, but it’s coming."

Besides playing lots of purely instrumental jazz over the years, Lacy has set numerous texts, from The Way (based on a translation of Lao Tzu’s ancient Tao) up through contemporary masters like Anna Akhmatova and the Beats. When he returned to the US two years ago to teach at the New England Conservatory after more than 30 years in Europe, his first faculty recital consisted of two specialties: solo saxophone performances of pieces by Thelonious Monk and a set of songs — in this case Beat poetry — performed in duet with Aebi. The two met in Rome in 1966. "I’ve been into literature all my life," Lacy continues. "When I met Irene and heard her voice, that was the seed, you know, that was the birth of all the stuff that we’ve done since then. It’s a strict collaboration, because if she won’t sing what I write, what’s the point?"

Lacy has been credited with creating a form of jazz art song. Like their analog in the classical world, his songs don’t follow conventional 32-bar patterns or verse-chorus arrangements. Instead, they follow the text in his typical wide-interval leaps, set to various rhythmic patterns — tango, waltz, march, straight 4/4.

Since she began singing with Lacy, Aebi has been a startling, bracing presence — an earthy mezzo with a dramatic, declamatory style. On the quintet recording of The Beat Suite, listeners unfamiliar with that style might be shocked to hear these distinctly American poems delivered with her vaguely European accent (she’s Swiss born). And if you’re at all familiar with William Burroughs’s flat, deadpan delivery, the lively treatment of a piece adapted from his Naked Lunch might also come as a surprise. But, like other of his song cycles, this set is as much Lacy as it is the poets, and — especially with the participation of his superb band — it’s entirely consistent with his world of swing. And like other Lacy projects, it reflects friendships, acquaintances, and projects that go back decades. In most cases, the personal relationships came before the song writing.

"Irene was out in San Francisco in the early ’60s, before I knew her, and she met a lot of the poets out there, Jack Spicer and quite a few others, and later on we knew almost all those poets, and Burroughs and Brion Gysin and Anne Waldman, they’re all pals or acquaintances. I knew Gregory Corso, and Allen Ginsberg was a good friend."

Working as an expatriate, outside the mainstream US music industry, Lacy developed a unique approach and body of work, collaborating not only with poets and writers but with dancers and choreographers and painters. His stage production of one cycle of Creeley poems, Futurities (eventually released on a hatArt CD), employed stage sets by painter Kenneth Noland.

He points out that his career runs parallel to that of the Beat movement. "I began playing in 1950. Maybe I’m a little bit younger than they were, but not much, so I knew Ginsberg back in the ’50s in New York. Kerouac came in to hear me play with Cecil Taylor at the Five Spot. I didn’t know him then, but I heard that later." Lacy also points to the Beat Suite cover painting, In the Fragrance To Lose No Moss, by Abstract Expressionist Judith Lindbloom. "She’s one of the very last of those painters who worked that way at that time, the ’50s, and now she’s becoming suddenly discovered 50 years later. Well, these things really take more time than anyone had told me." Lacy laughs, since it’s obvious he could be talking about his own career.

Steve Lacy and Irene Aebi will perform in MIT’s "Words & Music" series with Robert Creeley at MIT’s Killian Hall, 160 Memorial Drive, next Thursday, March 11, at 7:30 p.m. It’s free and open to the public; call (617) 253-7894. The Steve Lacy Quintet, with Irene Aebi, George Lewis, Jean-Jacques Avenal, and John Betsch, performs March 12 and 13 at 8 p.m. at the ICA, 955 Boylston Street in Boston; call (617) 354-6898.


Issue Date: March 5 - 11, 2004
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