"Steve Lacy (July 23, 1934 - June 4, 2004), born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York City, was a jazz saxophonist and composer recognized as one of the important players of soprano saxophone. Coming to prominence in the 1950s as a progressive dixieland musician, Lacy went on to a long and prolific career. He worked extensively in experimental jazz and to a lesser extent in free improvisation, but Lacy's music was typically melodic and tightly-structured. Lacy also became a highly distinctive composer, with compositions often built out of little more than a single questioning phrase, repeated several times.

The music of Thelonious Monk became a permanent part of Lacy's repertoire after a stint in the pianist's band, with Monk's songs appearing on virtually every Lacy album and concert program; Lacy often partnered with trombonist Roswell Rudd in exploring Monk's work. Beyond Monk, Lacy performed the work of jazz composers such as Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington and Herbie Nichols; unlike many jazz musicians he rarely played standard popular or show tunes.

Lacy began his career at sixteen playing Dixieland music with much older musicians such as Henry "Red" Allen, Pee Wee Russell, George "Pops" Foster and Zutty Singleton and then with Kansas City jazz players like Buck Clayton, Dicky Wells, and Jimmy Rushing. He then became involved with the avant-garde, performing on Jazz Advance (1956), the debut album of Cecil Taylor,:55 and appearing with Taylor's groundbreaking quartet at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival; he also made a notable appearance on an early Gil Evans album. His most enduring relationship, however, was with the music of Thelonious Monk: he recorded the first album to feature only Monk compositions (Reflections, Prestige, 1958) and briefly played in Monk's band in 1960:241 and later on Monk's Big Band and Quartet in Concert album (Columbia, 1963).

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 and the South African musicians Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo (their visit to Buenos Aires is documented on 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,:272 soprano/alto saxophonist Steve Potts, pianist Bobby Few, bassist Jean-Jacques Avenel, and drummer Oliver Johnson (later John Betsch). 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. 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. 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."

In 1992, he was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (nicknamed the "genius grant").

He also collaborated with a wide range of musicians, from traditional jazz to the avant-garde to contemporary classical music. Outside of his regular sextet, his most regular collaborator was pianist Mal Waldron,:244-245 with whom he recorded a number of duet albums (notably Sempre Amore, a collection of Ellington/Strayhorn material, Soul Note, 1987).

Lacy played his 'farewell concerts to Europe' in Belgium, in duo and solo, for a small but motivated public. This happened in Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruge and Bergen. This recollection is published by Naked Music. In Ghent he played with the classical violinist Mikhail Bezverkhni, winner of Queen Elisabeth Concours. He returned to the United States in 2002, where he began teaching at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. One of his last public performances was in front of 25,000 people at the close of a peace rally on Boston Common in March 2003, shortly before the US-led invasion of Iraq.

After Lacy was diagnosed with cancer in August 2003, he continued playing and teaching until weeks before his death on June 4, 2004 at the age of 69."

"Jean-Jacques Avenel, born 16 June 1948 in Saint-Nicolas-d'Aliermont ( Seine-Maritime ) and died 12 August 2014. He was a jazz bassist, a faithful companion to Steve Lacy, and participated in many other musical adventures. He was interested especially in African music, the kora and tradition Mandingo.

Jean-Jacques Avenel was self-taught, although he subsequently benefit from the lessons of Kent Carte. He began his career by participating in the free jazz movement, playing with Steve Waring, Colette Magny, Don Cherry, and with Noah Howard, the quartet of Frank Wright and Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra training François Tusques. He also accompanies the saxophonist Daunik Lazro.

From 1975, he began to be associated with different formations led by Steve Lacy. Trio, sextet, quartet... But also the quintet consisting addition Lacy and Avenel, saxophonist Steve Potts, drummer Oliver Johnson and pianist Bobby Few, often with the singer Irene Aebi. A long collaboration begins. He accompanied Steve Lacy for nearly 30 years, performing in many festivals and other places in Europe and the United States, and participating in more than twenty albums recordings. He had also the opportunity to accompany Butch Morris in 1980, and David Murray in the 1990s.

He participated in the achievements of Michel Edelin and particularly in the quartet with Simon Goubert and Jacques Di Donato since 1995. More recently, he worked with young European pianists Benoît Delbecq, and Gael Mevel. And with American Mal Waldron and Australian Chris Cody. Plus work with Richard Galliano, George Lewis, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Dino Saluzzi, Paul Bley, and other.

He also regularly collaborated with François Raulin. In 2000, at the 38th festival Roaring, Avenel, Raulin and Adama Drame together created the ARD trio, training mixing European jazz tradition and the Mandingo. Jean-Jacques Avenel passion for African music and plays the kora, in addition to the bass. In 2004, Avenel and Sissokho surrounded themselves Lansiné Kouyaté, Moriba Koita and Michel Edelin for Waraba project ( "the lion" in language Bamana ). Then in 2006, he formed the trio DAG Domancich and Simon Goubert.

He died of cancer August 12, 2014."