Steve Lacy (July 23, 1934 ? June 4, 2004), born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York, was a jazz soprano saxophonist of Jewish heritage. A voracious reader, he was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (nicknamed the "genius grant") in 1992. 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 the debut album of Cecil Taylor 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 ban

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