Sad news today. Jazz great Pharoah Sanders has died at the age of 81. I was fortunate to see him perform several times, each time was something special. His album Karma with its spiritual anthem, "The Creator Has a Master Plan", is one of the absolute greatest pieces of 20th-century music and something that I turn to for solace in times of need. RIP, Pharoah, and thank you.
Sanders’ playing on late-1960s and early-‘70s albums like Karma and Thembi is visionary and intense; critics, in some sense, were not wrong to hear a hard break from the music they knew. But it is also tender, hopeful, and generous. There are big, buoyant grooves and warm, communal melodies. In the shifting inflection of a single note, he can move you from joy to anguish, terror to beatitude. Short of Coltrane himself, no saxophonist had access to further extremity of feeling. Awful pain, simmering defiance, burning need, sweet consummation—if you’ve ever felt it deep in your spirit or your gut, it’s there somewhere in Sanders’ music.
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