Pharoah Sanders, the saxophonist and jazz great who played with John Coltrane and released more than 30 albums, has died. He was 81.
“We are devastated to share that Pharoah Sanders has passed away,’” his label Luaka Bop tweeted Saturday, Sept. 24. “He died peacefully surrounded by loving family and friends in Los Angeles earlier this [Saturday] morning. Always and forever the most beautiful human being, may he rest in peace.”
He was born Farrell Sanders in Little Rock, Arkansas, and began his professional music career in Oakland before moving to New York in the early 1960s. Sanders, who was known for his multiphonic techniques on the saxophone. Before joining Coltrane, Sanders played with the Sun Ra Arkestra where he picked up the nickname Pharoah.
He played with Coltrane on more than a dozen recordings from 1964 until his death in 1967. Sanders was considered one of Coltrane’s major disciples and an integral part of what was known as the spiritual jazz movement. His website calls those ensembles “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,” it explains.
In addition to Coltrane, Sanders also performed with his widow, Alice Coltrane, and other iconic jazz artists including Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Kenny Garrett and McCoy Tyner. One of his best known works was “The Creator Has a Master Plan,” a 32-minute recording that was released in 1968.
In 2016, Sanders was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor for a jazz musician in the United States. His final album was 2021’s “Promises,” which also featured British electronic musician Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra.
No cause of death was announced.
