AllMovie

Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy ranks alongside Sidney Bechet and John Coltrane as one of the few who permanently reshaped and reworked Dixieland music by contemporizing it in a postmodern vein. With his reassessments and reinventions of such Dixieland tunes as "Work," "Played Twice," and "Criss Cross" by Thelonious Monk and self-penned standards such as "Blinks," "Capers," "Clichés," and "Troubles,"Lacy laid the groundwork, stylistically, for innumerable later players and left in his wake a treasure trove for generations of listeners upon his death in 2004. Lacy is the center of the film Steve Lacy: Lift the Bandstand, which draws from interviews with Lacy himself -- as he expostulates on his place in the jazz realm and his contributions to the medium -- and rare archival footage of Lacy in performance. By juxtaposing extended clips of such luminaries as Bechet, Coltrane, Monk, and Gil Evans and Cecil Taylor, Bandstand reflects on Lacy's stylistic and professional relationship to those individuals. It also features extended discussions (and live melodic demonstrations) of the emotional and philosophical undercurrents that underlie Lacy's music. Additional collaborators and friends who appear here include Irene Aebi, Bobby Few, Steve Potts, Jean-Jacques Avenel, and Oliver Johnson.