Frank Lacy

During the '80s and '90s, most of the best jazz trombonists were inclined toward free jazz: Albert Mangelsdorff, Craig Harris, and Steve Swell, among them. Others, like Frank Lacy, straddled the fence between avant-garde and mainstream forms. Lacy has played with such free jazz paragons as Henry Threadgill, Oliver Lake, and Julius Hemphill, yet can also count Dizzy Gillespie and Abdullah Ibrahim among the prominent leaders for whom he's worked. Indeed, Lacy spent a year-and-a-half as music director for Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and played with Bobby Watson's Horizon band, w...