Event:
Jan. 2nd – 4th
(Fri-Sat: 8:00 pm & 10:00 pm; Sun: 7:00 pm)
Yoshi’s Jazz Club
Oakland, CA

Jazz legend Pharoah Sanders descends on the Bay area to play Yoshi’s in Oakland on Friday, January 2nd through Sunday, January 4th. He will also make his way to Santa Cruz for one night at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center on Monday, January 5th.

Ferrell Sanders was renamed “Pharoah” by Sun Ra when he joined Ra’s Arkestra. Then Sanders joined the cadre of avant-garde saxophone pioneers of the time: Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp. Pharoah Sanders possesses an instantly identifiable tone that is thick and harmonically rich and heavy with overtones- a sound that can be as aggressive and raspy as Peter Brotzman. Coltrane’s later style was strongly influenced by Sanders. Sanders first really captured the publics attention while playing with expressionistic and wide-open free jazz in John Coltrane’s late ensembles of the mid-’60s. Sanders’ later music has become more lyrical and soulful while continuing to explore new harmonic terrain.

Pharoah Sanders formed his first group in 1963, with pianist John Hicks (with whom he would continue to play off-and-on into the ’90s), bassist Wilbur Ware, and drummer Billy Higgins. His first record as a leader was in 1964 for the ESP label. The group played an engagement at New York’s Village Gate, where John Coltrane heard him and by 1965, Sanders was playing regularly with the Coltrane group. Strength was a necessity in that band, and as Coltrane realized, Sanders had it in abundance.

After John Coltrane’s death in 1967, Sanders worked briefly with his widow, Alice Coltrane, and then primarily as a leader of his own ensembles. From 1966-1971, Sanders released several albums on Impulse, including Tauhid (1966), Karma (1969), Black Unity (1971), and Thembi (1971). Not to be forgotten around this time period was a major international hit album Village of the Pharoahs. Originally recorded four years after the death of one of his major influences and collaborators, John Coltrane , it features thirteen different musicians, including notables like Norman Connors on drums, Cecil McBee and Stanley Clark on bass, Sedatrius Brown on vocals and nice percussion work by Joe Bonner with Kylo Kylo adding a Eastern touch to the percussion. This is one of his more rare discs and deserves closer listening.

In the mid-’70s, Sanders recorded his most commercial effort, Love Will Find a Way (Arista, 1977); it turned out to be a brief detour. From the late ’70s until 1987, he recorded for the small independent label Theresa. From 1987, Sanders recorded for the Evidence and Timeless labels. The former bought Theresa records in 1991 and subsequently re-released Sanders’ output for that company. In 1995, Sanders made his first major-label album in many years, Message From Home (produced by Bill Laswell for Verve).

The two followed that one up in 1999 with Save Our Children. In 2000, Sanders released Spirits — a multi-ethnic live suite with Hamid Drake and Adam Rudolph. In the decades after his first recordings with Coltrane, Sanders developed the capability of playing convincingly in a variety of contexts, from free to mainstream, and as a mature artist he has discovered a hard-edged lyricism that has served him well.

Location:
Yoshi’s Jazz Club
510 Embarcadero West
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 238-9200
http://www.yoshis.com/jazzclub

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