Steve Lacy: Snips: Live at Environ

Here was Lacy exploring the full possibilities of solo saxophone music, from the sheer beauty of the opening "Hooky" and the expansive spirituality of two suites, "The 4 Edges" and the famous and oft-recorded "Tao," to the exhilarating noise effects of what's styled here as "The New York Duck" (cf. "Swiss Duck" on hatART's The Way ) and the bravura resignation of "Revolutionary Suicide."

So you get Lacy in daring, dashing form, chanting "Don't go to school!" for "Hooky" and a Buddhist mantra for "The 4 Edges." He shows his mastery of the horn - his conquest of the horn - in high-register passages throughout (see especially "Coastline (Water)," the third part of "The 4 Edges"). He displays a tenderness and lyricism that are utterly original - they don't make even the slightest gesture to standard balladry or to any other standard "melodic" motifs. (See, for example, "Pearl Street.") He experiments with form, as on "Deadline (Earth)," the fourth of "The 4 Edges," a piece which consists of a motif that's repeated faster and faster until it launches the performer into open space.

The solo soprano saxophone, when played by Steve Lacy, is a musical universe unto itself. The places Lacy goes on these two discs would fill a travelogue. And every inch of the ride is magnificent, involving music.