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     Looking back on my many years of residence in Paris, one of the musical associations of which I am most proud was touring and recording with the marvelous soprano sax player and composer Steve Lacy. He called me in 1984 to help him prepare the recording and performances of “Futurities” (Hat Hut, 1985 – 2 LP’s/CD’s), an astonishing multi-media event with a 9 piece band, two dancers – Elsa Wolliaston and Douglas Dunn, 20 poems by Robert Creeley set to music by Steve, as well as a 9 foot tall painting in the form of an inverted triangle by Kenneth Nolan which was unfurled as a scenario for our live performances. We premiered the show at L’Opera du Nord in Lille and toured much of Europe, including a memorable 3-week British Arts Council Tour. And I got to do the show as a trio with Steve and Irene Aebi at the Salon du Livre in Aix-en-Provence. The recording was done direct to 2 tracks at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. This blending of seemingly disparate elements was typical of Steve, who was capable of playing with a Japanese Noh dancer, Gil Evans’ big band, Thelonious Monk (aside from playing on Monk’s “Big Band and Quartet in Concert”, Steve recorded several magnificent albums of Monk’s music, including “Reflections”, with Mal Waldron, (Prestige, 1958) – decades before Monk was canonized as one of jazz’s greatest composers), Cecil Taylor (Steve played on Cecil’s debut album, “Jazz Advance”), Roswell Rudd, Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava, and most of Europe’s leading avant garde jazz musicians.

     Steve was born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York, July 23, 1934 – and died in Boston June 4, 2004, shortly after returning to the USA after over 3 decades in Paris. Inspired by Sidney Bechet to adopt the soprano sax, a rare instrument in the 1950’s. Lacy in turn influenced John Coltrane to take up the soprano as his second instrument. Avant garde jazz didn’t pay a very well in New York in the 1950’s and 60’s. Steve told me that before he left NYC in the mid sixties, he, Taylor, Rudd and other creative jazz musicians “were playing for $5 in coffee shops”! Steve moved to Paris and it worked for him, although he told me that his first few years there were not easy – “We were inventing places to play”. Steve knew chord changes inside out, although he preferred not to use them in his improvisational setups. This was brought home again to me recently when I heard his featured solo on “It Was Just One of Those Things” with Gil Evans from a 50’s Evans release. But he would call you out in a second if he thought you were not improvising within the elements of each of his compositions. It was definitely “structured out”! Steve was a master musician, and I learned so much about opening up my improvising “game” through playing his music with him, for which I am truly grateful.

     Eddie Harris – saxophonist, vocalist, pianist, trumpeter, composer, and instrument inventor, was one of the underrated heroes of jazz. Born in 1934 in Chicago, he started his musical life as a singer in a Baptist church. Although he had a million seller record with his version of the movie theme Exodus on the album “Exodus to Jazz”, he never really “cashed in” as a major touring artist on the scale merited by his talent. Another key record was “Swiss Movement”, recorded live at the Montreux Festival with pianist Les McCann. He revealed to me that the smash hit title tune from that record was totally improvised on stage – Eddie, being a more than competent pianist, played looking at Les’ hands and thereby followed and anticipated the chord changes!

     Eddie’s band in the 60’s featuring electric piano, electric saxophone and electronic effects such as wah-wah and phase shifter was a prime source of what became known as “jazz rock” and “jazz fusion”. Eddie told me that he had shared a bill with Miles Davis’ (then acoustic) band for a week at the Village Gate and shortly afterwards Miles incorporated both electric piano and electronic effects into his concept, made famous worldwide with his “Bitches Brew” double album.

    I toured Europe for one memorable week with Eddie and long-time Thelonious Monk bassist Larry Gales. Aside from sharing great stories about jazz artists (when Larry and Eddie got to talking in the van it was really deep “you are there” Jazz History time!), Eddie showed himself to be a warm and caring individual. He told me that John Coltrane often called him for help with the mysteries of Nicolas Slonimsky’s monumental music treatise, “A Thesaurus of Musical Scales and Patterns”. He said that Coltrane liked to practice saxophone with him because “he liked my time”. Ever curious about many musical styles, Eddie went to Paris to study at the National Conservatory. His command of the tenor sax was so unusual that some professors knocked on the door of the room where he was practicing to ask Eddie what fingering he used to be able to play 5 B flats on the horn. Eddie replied, “If you don’t know how to do that, then maybe I should be teaching here!”.

     When we met for the first rehearsal, he asked me “what do you want to play?” I replied, “whatever you want, but we have to play Freedom Jazz Dance”. Eddie’s classic and eternally modern tune, covered by Miles on the “Miles Smiles” album and Miroslav Vitous on “Mountain in the Sky”, among countless other versions, is a ground-breaking study in intervallic composition – coupled with an infectious funk beat. I ended up recording the piece on a Japanese release with vocalists Norma Winstone and Mona Larsen, entitled “Freedom Jazz Dance”. I found out on the tour that not only could Eddie sing everything that he played on the sax, but that he could imitate many instruments with his voice – a technique used by Bobby McFerrin and Al Jarreau. In one of his vocal improvisations, he sang an entire drum solo, complete with low, medium, and high toms!

    Modern guitar master John Scofield acknowledged Eddie’s mastery by calling him as featured sideman on his “Hand Jive” album. And he is one of the most widely sampled of jazzmen – by the likes of Jamiroquai and DJ Jazzy Jeff. Eddie was stylistically unclassifiable – recording funk, rhythm’n blues, bebop, bossa nova, latin jazz, avant garde, vocal numbers, and modern jazz. I will never forget him turning on the audiences with his humorous vocal tune “Eddie Who?” as well as the endless creative ideas that poured out of his sax night after night.

    Eddie’s discography is wide – including over 70 titles as a leader. Standouts include: “The Electrifying Eddie Harris”, “Mean Greens”, “The Best of Eddie Harris”, “The Genius of Eddie Harris”, “Step Up with the Eddie Harris Quartet”, and co-leader sessions with Ellis Marsalis and John Klemmer.  He patented numerous musical inventions that he created including the Varitone, which enabled the sax to play with a second octave doubling the line and a device which enabled the sax to sound like a 5-part sax section, as well as reed trumpets and saxophones, all of which he handcrafted at his home. Eddie revealed to me that he ghostwrote many Hollywood film scores that were credited to other composers. He also published seven books of his musical ideas and compositions. Always independent, always honest, always a trendsetter, Eddie Harris summed up his musical philosophy this way – “I’m not hung up on fads, for the simple reason that they stunt my growth”.

Kenny Wheeler was one of the most important trumpet players and composers in the history of Jazz. Born in Canada on January 14th, 1930 and naturalized citizen of Britain, Kenny absorbed all of the previous styles of trumpet to forge his own language and lead the way for future generations. As a composer he has few equals in the music. His classic albums for the ECM label include Gnu High, with Keith Jarrett, Dave Holland, and Jack DeJohnette, and Double Double You, featuring Michael Brecker and his frequent collaborator John Taylor on piano, as well as the magnificent double CD Music for Large and Small Ensembles. The latter album featured a who’s-who of British jazz musicians with Norma Winstone’s soprano vocals floating like a swift-flying bird over the magnificent arrangements. He also formed one third of Azimuth, with Taylor and Winstone, an unusual and poetic trio. Kenny’s music could be spare melodically, but always had a strong and original harmonic underpinning which yields new surprises at each hearing. He was able to improvise in a “free” idiom but his own albums show him as a composer at once daring in a structural way and attentive to the smallest details of composition and arrangement. Some of his other key musical associations include Anthony Braxton, Marc Copeland, John Abercrombie, Peter Erskine, and Evan Parker.

     I recorded the CD “California Daydream” with Kenny, Hein Van de Geyn, and André Ceccarelli live in Paris in 1994 at a short-lived but beautiful club called Alligators. We went live to DAT (2-track digital) over two nights and Kenny just nailed every melody and every solo. There was a lot of tension making a live recording with a group that had never performed together before and some strange innuendos from the producer and one of the other musicians about my introductions not having anything to do with the pieces, etc. etc.  Kenny must have sensed that I was upset, because he called me on the morning of the second day to say, “I just wanted to let you know that I love your compositions and your playing, so keep on doing what you’re doing”. His support was much appreciated and helped me “keep it together” for the second night of recording. The record came out nicely, a mix of original tunes penned by Hein, Kenny (including one of his infamous puns, “The Imminent Immigrant”), and myself. Unfortunately, the group never played together again. I spoke to Kenny several times on the phone afterwards and he expressed interest in playing together but it was not to be. The jazz world lost a trumpet prince and a splendid human being when Kenny Wheeler passed away at age 84 on September 18th, 2014.