Obituary for the great jazz saxophonist

In the 1960s, music was a religious promise. Anyone who explored its depths, explored its heights, could see freedom shining through the growth of forms and harmonies. The prophet of this belief was the African-American saxophonist John Coltrane, who led jazz through the fabric of tradition into an open field where art should no longer follow rules, but only emotion.

Ferell Sanders was also one of the up-and-coming young musicians who were infected by Coltrane’s mission in the jazz mecca of New York. Even more so when he played like this tenor saxophone. However, the world didn’t mean it very well with Sanders at first. Born on October 13, 1940 in Little Rock, Arkansas, the son of a music teacher and a music teacher first played the clarinet. He later attended college in Oakland, California, where he studied music and supported himself as a saxophonist in rhythm ‘n’ blues bands in the Bay Area.

noun est omen

At the beginning of the 1960s he tried to gain a foothold as a jazz musician in New York. Stylistically he oriented himself to bebop and in particular to style-forming tenor saxophonists such as Harold Land or Sonny Rollins. Blessed with talent, he still didn’t manage to assert himself in Jazz City, which was overflowing with talent. Instead of shining as a musician, he had to hire odd jobs; he had to temporarily pawn his instrument.

The artistic rise then coincided with the ennobling of his name. The saxophonist increasingly jammed with young musicians who were experimenting with new sounds and forms. It was then the avant-garde pianist Sun Ra who renamed Ferell Sanders Pharoah Sanders. He formed a band with like-minded people like Wilbur Ware on bass and Billy Higgins on drums. And it was in this formation that he was discovered by John Coltrane in 1964.

Coltrane took the young colleague under his wing as a disciple and companion. In the mid-1960s, Sanders often stood by his idol in concerts and on recordings («Ascension», 1966; «OM», 1968). Anyone who wonders why Coltrane had a tenor saxophonist take his place as his second will find the answer in the music.

Pharoah Sanders caught fire in Coltrane’s harmonically liberated jazz, his personal playing began to glow, flicker and blaze. And whenever an improvisation brought Coltrane to the brink of ecstasy, Sanders plunged right into it afterwards. With so-called “sheets of sounds”, with stirring split sounds and panting overblowing technique, he developed an unparalleled hymn-like fervor.

Coltrane’s free jazz provided a controversial climax in jazz, which in just a few decades had transformed from dance and light music into an individualistic art form – and with Coltrane now also into an art religion, which found a ritual servant in Sanders. In this respect, Sanders’ function in Coltrane’s free jazz can be compared to the chorus of ancient tragedy or to the background singers in soul. When the band leader passed the expressive fire on to a disciple, the musician’s «feu sacré» became a mission that allowed personal expression to merge with religious experience.

With John Coltrane’s untimely death (1967), Sanders not only lost his mentor, but also the ceremonial setting of his fevered expressiveness. However, its incomparable sound continued to prove itself as a signature of freedom.

The pendulum has now swung in a new direction. Like many free jazz exponents, Sanders sought to recover from his experiences in ecstasy and hypnosis in simpler pieces. On the albums for the label Impulse! such as “Tauhid” (1966), “Karma” (1969) or “Thembi” (1971), Pharoah Sanders relied on singable melodies and simple rhythms from all over the world. With flutes and bells he created a mystical ambiance, which he later expanded with echoes of rock and pop.

The sound of freedom

But whether fusion, ethno or ambient jazz: Pharoah Sanders’ sound remained heated and anthemic and maintained its high recognition value. This may explain why his influence not only on jazz, but also on the rock and electro scene. Anyone who has seen the saxophonist live in recent years may have felt a certain disillusionment – his anarchic sounds now seemed like clichés that could be called up.

But it was precisely because of this that the Pharoah Sanders sound was recommended as a symbol of freedom. Young producers in the hip-hop and electro world have been inspired by the free jazz pioneer and have integrated his electrifying expressiveness into their soundscapes. This applies in particular to the British Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points, who produced the ambient suite “Promises” in 2021 together with the London Symphony Orchestra and Pharoah Sanders. In this way, the art of the great jazz saxophonist was visualized as a legacy. – Pharoah Sanders died in Los Angeles on Saturday at the age of 81.