STEVE LACY 'AT JAZZWERKSTATT PEITZ' . Somebody once asked Steve Lacy: ""Steve, please explain in ten seconds what's the difference between composition and improvisation."" Lacy's answer: ""You have all the time you need for ten seconds of composition. For ten seconds of improvisation you have - well, exactly ten seconds."" ""Every soprano player looks up to Steve Lacy,"" Wayne Shorter once said. . Steve Lacy died on 4 June 2004. He was one of the most important and innovative improvisational musicians to ever leave this planet. . ERNST-LUDWIG PETROWSKY 'EIN NACHMITTAG IN PEITZ' . The Jazzwerkstatt Peitz - masterminded by Ulli Blobel in cooperation with his soulmate and supporter Peter 'Jimi' Metag - is an incredible, never-ending story in the midst of bleak everyday life in a one-Party socialist state that was the German Democratic Republic, or GDR. I played my first gig in Peitz as early as 1957 with the 'Orchester Eberhard Weise, Görlitz' From there, it was a long road of 24 years to the show that the 'Petrowsky-Quintet' played at Jazzwerkstatt Peitz in April 1981 This CD titled 'Ein Nachmittag in Peitz' is just a slice of music to commemorate that period: the live intensity and spontaneous improvisational drama speak for themselves, for the musicians, and for the unrestrained wildness of Peitz in the 1980s - in spite (or even on account) of the strict state control of cultural affairs in the former GDR. Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky GÜNTER BABY SOMMER/BARRE PHILLIPS/MANFRED SCHOOF/GIANLUIGI TROVESI 'PEITZER GRAND MIT VIEREN' . 'Peitzer Grand mit Vieren'. What the four players show here can be described as virtuosity and maturity, a far cry from the deliberate destruction of traditional values, from the 'let's play it to death' phase. In its newly won freedom, the music here unfolds with an awareness of form and structure, and the spirit of improvisation gives rise to a coherent arc corresponding to a phenomenon that has been described as 'instant composing'.