Reflections plays thelonious monk biography

It's been over twenty years since the late Steve Lacy last came to town, but the memory remains vivid of his annual visits to the Iron Horse in Northampton. 

Few experiences made NoHo feel quite so cosmopolitan as an appearance by Lacy’s Paris-based sextet, which included the American expatriates Lacy, saxophonist Steve Potts, pianist Bobby Few, and drummer John Betsch, as well as Lacy’s Swiss-born wife, the singer and violinist Irene Aebi, and the French-born bassist Jean-Jacques Avinel.  (Betsch lived in Amherst when I first came to the Valley in the mid-'70s, and we stay connected on Facebook.)

The group played a mix of Monk tunes, Brechtian art song, Beat poems, quirky, catchy originals and, through the quacking sopranos of Lacy and Potts, a virtual conference of the ducks.

Monk was a key centering devise in Lacy’s music, so no matter how far out it got, there was usually a landing zone m