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Pharoah Sanders

Pharoah Sanders is an NEA Jazz Master

Pharoah Sanders possesses one of the most distinctive tenor saxophone sounds in jazz. Harmonically rich and heavy with overtones, Sanders’ sound can be as raw and abrasive as it is possible for a saxophonist to produce. Yet, Sanders is highly regarded to the point of reverence by a great many jazz fans. Although he made his name with expressionistic, nearly anarchic free jazz in John Coltrane’s late ensembles of the mid-’60s, Sanders’ later music is guided by more graceful concerns.

The hallmarks of Sanders’ playing at that time were naked aggression and unrestrained passion. In the years after Coltrane’s death, however, Sanders explored other, somewhat gentler and perhaps more cerebral avenues — without, it should be added, sacrificing any of the intensity that defined his work as an apprentice to Coltrane.

Pharoah Sanders (his given name, Ferrell Sanders) was born into a musical family. Sanders’ early favorites included Harold Land, James Moody, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane. Known in the San Francisco Bay Area as “Little Rock,” Sanders soon began playing bebop, rhythm & blues, and free jazz with many of the region’s finest musicians, including fellow saxophonists Dewey Redman and Sonny Simmons, as well as pianist Ed Kelly and drummer Smiley Winters. In 1961, Sanders moved to New York, where he struggled. Unable to make a living with his music, Sanders took to pawning his horn, working non-musical jobs, and sometimes sleeping on the subway. During this period he played with a number of free jazz luminaries, including Sun Ra, Don Cherry, and Billy Higgins.

In 1964, Coltrane asked Sanders to sit in with his band. The following year, Sanders was playing regularly with the Coltrane group. Coltrane’s ensembles with Sanders were some of the most controversial in the history of jazz. Their music represents a near total desertion of traditional jazz concepts, like swing and functional harmony, in favor of a teeming, irregularly structured, organic mixture of sound for sound’s sake. Strength was a necessity in that band, and as Coltrane realized, Sanders had it in abundance.

Sanders made his first record as a leader in 1964. After John Coltrane’s death in 1967, Sanders worked briefly with his widow, Alice Coltrane. From the late ’60s, he worked primarily as a leader of his own ensembles.

In the decades after his first recordings with Coltrane, Sanders developed into a more well-rounded artist, capable of playing convincingly in a variety of contexts, from free to mainstream.

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Play This!

Pharoah Sanders: Upper Egypt & Lower Egypt

Read "Pharoah Sanders: Upper Egypt & Lower Egypt" reviewed by Chris May


This little beauty, all sixteen minutes of it, is the opening track of Pharoah Sanders' first own-name masterpiece, Tauhid (Impulse!), recorded in 1966, released in 1967, and the blueprint for Sanders' style of astral jazz. Remarkably, many jazz enthusiasts, including Sanders fans, seem not to have heard Tauhid--and one leading tenor saxophonist on London's alternative jazz scene had never even heard of the album until it was brought to their attention in an interview a couple of years ago. Sanders ...

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Book Review

On Minimalism: Documenting A Musical Movement

Read "On Minimalism: Documenting A Musical Movement" reviewed by Ian Patterson


On Minimalism: Documenting A Musical Movement Kerry O'Brien and William Robin 449 Pages ISBN: 9780520382084 University of California Press 2023 Much like jazz, the origin story of minimalism is messy and hard to pin down to a date. And like jazz, definitions of minimalism can be rather slippery or downright contentious. Such challenges, thankfully, have not stopped editors Kerry O'Brien and William Robin from colourfully depicting a movement(s) in all its weird and ...

12
Album Review

Pharoah Sanders: Pharoah (Box Set)

Read "Pharoah (Box Set)" reviewed by Chris May


With the passing of Pharoah Sanders in September 2022, almost a year ago at the time of writing, and bearing in mind advances in sound-restoration technology, we can anticipate a stream of previously unissued Sanders recordings being released in the years ahead. If this outstanding 2-CD / 2-LP box set is anything to go by, bring it on. Disc One is a straight reissue of Sanders' oft pirated 1977 album Pharoah (India Navigation), albeit with much improved ...

9
Album Review

Pharoah Sanders Quartet: Live At Fabrik

Read "Live At Fabrik" reviewed by Chris May


One reason Pharoah Sanders was such a special artist was the prismatic nature of his music. When Sanders lit on to a new avenue of investigation, he did not in the process reject what he had been doing up until that moment. Instead, he wove the new perspective into the existing structure, enriching rather than replacing it. The result was a rainbow in which the joins between what might have been, in lesser hands, incompatible instead became inaudible, and the ...

2
Radio & Podcasts

Pharoah Sanders, Cristiano Calcagnile & Sea Jun Kwon

Read "Pharoah Sanders, Cristiano Calcagnile & Sea Jun Kwon" reviewed by Maurice Hogue


The first two of hours of this episode of One Man's Jazz feature music from a number of excellent new releases, including two from Italy featuring drummer Cristiano Calcagnile's Anokhi and pianist Federico Nuti, a pair from Germany in trombonist Andreas Schickentanz & guitarist Jonas Hemmersbach, bassist Sea Jun Kwon & the Walking Cliche Sextet, Zoh Amba's Bhakti , the Blue Reality Quartet, and French drummer Florian Chaigne. The final hour is filled with music featuring the magnificent and eternal ...

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Interview

My Conversation with Pharoah Sanders

Read "My Conversation with Pharoah Sanders" reviewed by AAJ Staff


From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in February 1999. When I first heard “The Father And The Son And The Holy Ghost" off of John Coltrane's Meditations, I was floored. I got the same reaction when I first heard Maria Callas sing “Vissi d'arte" in Victor de Sabata's interpretation of Puccini's Tosca. Callas was simply better than everyone else. She was on a whole different level than we were and thus the ...

2
Unsung Heroes

Evidence Releases Three Long-Overdue Jazz Gems by Pharoah Sanders

Read "Evidence Releases Three Long-Overdue Jazz Gems by Pharoah Sanders" reviewed by Robert Spencer


From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in May 1999. Ferrell Sanders came out of Little Rock, Arkansas and hooked up with Mr. Herman “Sonny" Blount, who preferred to be known as Sun Ra and dubbed Sanders “Pharoah." A little later a guy named Coltrane asked Pharoah to join his quintet, and the jazz world at large was introduced to the man one reviewer referred to as “the torch-mouthed screamer of the reeds." ...

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Obituary

Pharoah Sanders (1940-2022)

Pharoah Sanders (1940-2022)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Pharoah Sanders, a tenor saxophonist who initially was associated with free-jazz players in the 1960s, including Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Don Cherry and John Coltrane, but who went on to record several critical pan-African spiritual albums under his own name before developing a softer, more romantic sound in the 1980s and beyond, died on September 23. He was 81. Born in Little Rock, Ark., Farrell Sanders changed his first name to Pharoah in the early 1960s at the urging of ...

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Video / DVD

Pharoah Sanders: Promises

Pharoah Sanders: Promises

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Even when Pharoah Sanders plays up-tempo, he sounds as if he's playing a ballad. That's because the tenor saxophonist, known for his deeply spiritual approach, is always in a meditative state when creating. Sanders began playing jazz in 1961, when he moved to New York from Oakland, Calif. Born Farrell Sanders in Little Rock, Ark., he was urged in New York to use the name Pharoah instead of Ferrell by Sun Ra. Sanders followed the orchestra leader's advice and promptly ...

3

Festival

Jazztopad Hosts Wadada Leo Smith, Pharoah Sanders And Mulatu Astatke, 13 - 23 November

Jazztopad Hosts Wadada Leo Smith, Pharoah Sanders And Mulatu Astatke, 13 - 23 November

Source: All About Jazz

Jazztopad, the internationally renowned Polish jazz festival held in jny:Wroclaw, returns for its 11th edition from 13 – 23 November 2014. This year promises to be a tremendously exciting festival, with the usual mixture of jazz legends, up-and-coming talent, World Premieres, international showcases and much more besides. Trumpeter Nate Wooley gets the festival underway on the 13th with the premiere of his work Psalms from Hell, featuring the ever-adventurous soprano Megan Schubert and the Festival Cello Ensemble. The second half ...

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Recording

Pharoah Sanders - In the Beginning - 1963-1964 Four-CD Boxed Set Includes 2 Discs of Unreleased Music

Pharoah Sanders - In the Beginning - 1963-1964  Four-CD Boxed Set Includes 2 Discs of Unreleased Music

Source: Michael Bloom Media Relations

PHAROAH SANDERS: IN THE BEGINNING - 1963-1964 (ESP-4069) This four-CD set documents the first recordings of iconic tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, prior to his well known association with John Coltrane. Beginning with two previously unreleased sessions with Ornette Coleman alumni Don Cherry and Paul Bley, followed by Pharoah's debut date as a leader for ESP-Disk' and concluding with the first issue ever of the complete the December 30 and 31, 1964 Sun Ra at Judson Hall concerts, Sanders' only known ...

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Recording

Pharoah Sanders - Village of the Pharaohs/Wisdom Through Music (Originally Released on Impulse, 1971-72, Re-Issued Verve, 2011)

Pharoah Sanders - Village of the Pharaohs/Wisdom Through Music (Originally Released on Impulse, 1971-72, Re-Issued Verve, 2011)

Source: Music and More by Tim Niland

Although saxophonist Pharoah Sanders made his reputation as a firebrand of “The New Thing" there was always a deeply spiritual and meditative side to his playing and that aspect of his music comes to the forefront on this recently re-issued “2-fer." “Village of the Pharaohs" is a three part suite, which is particularly interesting because Sanders is playing soprano saxophone rather than his usual tenor. The music is full of rumbling percussion and the introduction of the shakuhachi adds an ...

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Music Industry

Pharoah Sanders: Welcome to Love

Pharoah Sanders: Welcome to Love

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

As an ice-cold rain fell yesterday in New York, I reached for Welcome to Love, a 1990 album by Pharoah Sanders that I hadn't heard in a few years. The Sphinx-like tenor saxophonist is best known for his spiritual and avant-garde jazz recordings of the 1960s and 1970s, most notably Karma, which includes the dazzling 32-minute-plus The Creator Has a Master Plan. But the album I pulled loose features a slightly different Sanders. On Welcome to Love, the saxophonist plays ...

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Music Industry

Kahil El'zabar's Ritual Trio Featuring Pharoah Sanders - Ooh Live (Bright Moments Records, 2008) ***a1/2

Kahil El'zabar's Ritual Trio Featuring Pharoah Sanders - Ooh Live (Bright Moments Records, 2008) ***a1/2

Source: All About Jazz

Kahil El'Zabar's has this magical touch to turn all his music into a pure joy, full of playful spirituality, reverent and fun at the same time. And yes, he tends to repeat himself at times, but then what, who cares, the performances of his Ritual Trio or the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble are always great to excellent. What more can you want? This one is recorded live in 2000, with Ari Brown on piano (predominantly) and sax and the late Malachi ...

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Performance / Tour

Les Paul (Mon) Mingus Orch. (Tues) May 2-6 Kenny Garrett/Pharoah Sanders (Fri Late Nite) JD Allen (Sat Late Nite) Dave Berkman at the Iridium Jazz Club

Les Paul (Mon) Mingus Orch. (Tues) May 2-6 Kenny Garrett/Pharoah Sanders (Fri Late Nite) JD Allen  (Sat Late Nite) Dave Berkman at the Iridium Jazz Club

Source: Jim Eigo, Jazz Promo Services

IRIDIUM JAZZ CLUB 1650 BROADWAY (Corner of 51st) NEW YORK, NY 10023 RESERVATIONS: 212-582-2121 8:30 & 10:30PM, Fri. & Sat. 3rd Sets AT MIDNIGHT Note: Set Times for Les Paul Remain at 8 & 10PM EVERY MONDAY LES PAUL AND HIS TRIO JOHN COLIANNI- PIANO- LOU PALLO- GUITAR, NICKI PARROTT- BASS Note: Set Times for Les Paul Remain at 8 & 10PM MINGUS LEGACY EVERY TUESDAY ...

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Performance / Tour

Les Paul (Tonight)-Mingus Big Band (Tue.) Pharoah Sanders Qt (Oct. 5-9) at The Iridium Jazz Club

Les Paul (Tonight)-Mingus Big Band (Tue.) Pharoah Sanders Qt (Oct. 5-9) at The Iridium Jazz Club

Source: All About Jazz

October 3, 2005 To: Listings/Critics/Features From: JAZZ PROMO SERVICES Press Contact: JIM EIGO, [email protected] IRIDIUM JAZZ CLUB 1650 BROADWAY (Corner of 51st) NEW YORK, NY 10023 RESERVATIONS: 212-582-2121, www.iridiumjazzclub.com Sets at 8 & 10PM EVERY MONDAY LES PAUL AND HIS QUARTET EVERY TUESDAY THE MINGUS BIG BAND ED PALERMO BIG BAND PLAYS THE MUSIC OF FRANK ZAPPA September 28, November 2 and November 9 Every Sunday Starting at 11:00AM Gospel Brunch featuring BISHOP NATHANIEL TOWNSLEY, JR. AND THE GOSPEL JUBILEE ...

Richard Oppenheim
saxophone, alto
Francis Wong
saxophone, tenor
Bonnie Kane
multi-instrumentalist
Dave Mullen
saxophone, tenor
Dennis Skerrett
saxophone
Richard Howell
saxophone
Jonathan Kava
saxophone, soprano
Martin Perna
saxophone, baritone
Phil Dawson
guitar
Viktor Haraszti
saxophone
Eyal Netzer
saxophone
Adam Nolan
saxophone
Alex Hand
guitar
Pieces
band / ensemble / orchestra
Eric Mullins
saxophone, tenor
Kannon
band / ensemble / orchestra
Tyler Levy Sniff
saxophone, tenor

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Live At Fabrik

Jazzline Classics
2023

buy

Floating Points

Luaka Bop
2021

buy

A Love Supreme - Live...

Impulse! Records
2021

buy

Live In Paris (1975)

Transversales Disques
2020

buy

Videos

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