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Musician Sanders, 2018 at the Kraków Jazz Festival
Photo: Omar Marques / imago images/ZUMA Wire
Last year the old master celebrated a late triumph with the album »Promises«, which the US saxophonist recorded together with the British electronic musician and composer Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points.
Sheperd was one of the first companions on Saturday to report with a sad Instagram post.
As previously announced by the label Luaka Bop, which released »Promises«, Pharoah Sanders died in the presence of his family in Los Angeles.
He was 81 years old.
"I am so fortunate to have known this man," Shepherd wrote in his post, "we are all blessed that his art will live with us forever."
Thanks, Pharoah.”
In the 1960s, Sanders, together with John Coltrane in his band, developed early forms of what is now known as free jazz: the two musicians, both on tenor saxophone, radicalized their sound with long, dissonant solos on albums such as »Ascension« and » Meditations« and consistently developed the avant-garde jazz that was initiated by Albert Ayler, among others.
After Coltrane's early death, Sanders worked with his widow Alice and fused his style with spiritual elements and African influences.
The joint album »Journey In Satchidananda«, released in 1971, is considered a milestone in spiritual jazz.
In 1969, Sanders created one of the rare hits in the jazz genre with his solo album »Karma«.
The album consisted of just two tracks: the later hip-hop sampled classic The Creator Has a Master Plan, 32 minutes long, and the slightly shorter Colors.
In its dynamism and in the tradition of the musical search for meaning, the cathartic reaching up for spiritual help in dark times, one could also understand the genre-breaking Floating Points album »Promises« in 2021, which Sanders made into a musical event with his age-appropriate playing.
Sander's art was shaped by the belief in a deeply optimistic "promise" of healing, of redemption from physical and mental ailments, regardless of whether it was about civil rights, racism, social injustice or, like last year, the pandemic melancholy of the corona crisis.
Farrell Sanders was born on October 13, 1940 in Little Rock, Arkansas.
His mother worked as a cook in a school, his father was a city employee.
As an only child, he began his musical career by accompanying hymns on the clarinet.
In high school, he switched to the saxophone and began playing in local bands.
In the early 1960s he often roamed New York without a job or a home and was discovered by the jazz philosopher and experimental musician Sun Ra, who took him under his wing and gave him the nickname Pharoah.
In 1965 John Coltrane hired him for his band.
His no less famous colleague Ornette Coleman once described Pharoah Sanders as »probably the best tenor player in the world«.
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