Category: Pharoah Sanders

From the moment Lonnie Liston Smith’s tantalizing piano chords are joined by the unmistakable vocals of Leon Thomas on “Prince Of Peace” it’s clear that Izipho Zam is going to be a very special recording. Liston Smith is on fire and the yodelling strains of Leon Thomas backed by a host of percussionists elevate the material to the spiritual jazz equivalent of an apex predator. It nearly swallows you whole. While Karma and Thembi get a disproportionate amount of attention in the Pharoah Sanders canon, the alchemical Izipho Zam is right up there with the very best of his work.

Pharoah Sanders and Leon Thomas’s thirty-minute magnum opus, ‘The Creator Has a Master Plan’ is arguably the paradigmatic work of spiritual jazz, setting the template of deep groove, free blowing and global rhythms that has long characterized the form. But it has also become, improbably enough, something of a standard, covered dozens upon dozens of times–both within the bounds of jazz and beyond them. We scoured a half century of covers and rounded up a handful of our absolute favorite incarnations.

Everything about Pharoah Sanders’ eponymous 1977 album is a gift. It’s a masterpiece of quiet mystique and joy that almost never was. Despite the fact that the maestro himself was never satisfied with the album and rarely spoke about it, Pharaoh took on a life of its own over the next four decades to become one of Sanders’ most hallowed and revered recordings. Now available for the first time since its original release, Pharaoh has been rejuvenated with the splendor of a monumental box set from Luaka Bop. It’s a tremendous archival achievement that casts new light on a crucial point of transition for Sanders, going above and beyond with a veritable trove of liner notes, photos and ephemera, and two previously unheard versions of Pharoah’s meditative opus, “Harvest Time.”

When Pharoah Sanders entered the studio to record Tauhid , his second album, he must have felt at ease. Which may have come to a surprise to him. Though he’d developed […]

Pharoah Sanders with accompaniment via Paul Asrlanian, on harmonium, in an abandoned tunnel. San Francisco (Marin Headlands – close to the Golden Gate Bridge), 1982.