LOS ANGELES (AP) — Pharoah Sanders, the influential tenor saxophonist revered in the jazz world for the spirituality of his work, has died, his record label announced. He was 81.
Sanders, who launched his career playing alongside John Coltrane in the 1960s, died in Los Angeles early Saturday, said the tweet from Luaka Bop, the label that released his 2021 album, “Promises.” It did not specify a cause. A phone message to Luaka Bop in New York was not immediately returned.
Keep scrolling for a look back at those we’ve lost in 2022
“We are devastated to share that Pharoah Sanders has passed away. He died peacefully surrounded by loving family and friends in Los Angeles earlier this morning. Always and forever the most beautiful human being, may he rest in peace,” said the label’s message on Twitter, accompanied by a heart emoji.
People are also reading…
Among the saxophonist’s best-known works was his two-part “The Creator Has a Master Plan,” from the “Karma” album released in 1969. The combined track is nearly 33 minutes long.
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1940, Sanders began his early musical life by playing drums, then the clarinet in church. In high school, he began renting out the school saxophone. After high school he moved to Oakland, California, where he intended to attend art school. But he soon moved to New York to join the city’s avant-garde jazz scene. He hitchhiked his way across country, he told The New Yorker magazine in 2020.
Arriving in 1962, he could hardly afford the New York life. “I was trying to survive some kind of way,” he told the magazine. “I used to work a few jobs here and there, earn five dollars, buy some food, buy some pizza. I had no money at all.”
In 1965, he joined Coltrane’s band. “I couldn’t figure out why he wanted me to play with him, because I didn’t feel like, at the time, that I was ready to play with John Coltrane,” Sanders said. “He always told me, ‘Play.’ That’s what I did.”
When Coltrane died, Sanders continued playing for a time with his wife, Alice Coltrane. He also started leading his own bands. His most commercially successful work came for Impulse Records, including the renowned “Karma” album.
After more than a decade of performing but not recording albums, Sanders released the much-admired “Promises” in 2021, with producer Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra. Rolling Stone called it “both startlingly minimal and arrestingly gorgeous.”
Known for his style of so-called spiritual jazz, Sanders, still actively playing, confessed in the 2020 New Yorker interview that “a lot of (the) time I don’t know what I want to play.
“So I just start playing, and try to make it right, and make it join to some other kind of feeling in the music,” he said. “Like, I play one note, maybe that one note might mean love. And then another note might mean something else. Keep on going like that until it develops into — maybe something beautiful.”
Photos: Those we’ve lost in 2022
Queen Elizabeth II
Olivia Newton-John
Bill Russell
Sidney Poitier
Naomi Judd
James Caan
Bob Saget
Anne Heche
Meat Loaf
Nichelle Nichols
Taylor Hawkins
Bernard Shaw
Madeleine Albright
Mikhail Gorbachev
Ivana Trump
Gilbert Gottfried
Estelle Harris
Liz Sheridan
Vin Scully
Len Dawson
David McCullough
Pat Carroll
Tony Dow
Shinzo Abe
Philip Baker Hall
Ray Liotta
Paul Sorvino
Tony Sirico
Fred Ward
Sonny Barger
Howard Hesseman
Larry Storch
Emilio Delgado
Louie Anderson
Orrin Hatch
Bob Lanier
Mickey Gilley
Ronnie Spector
Bobby Rydell
William Hurt
Claes Oldenburg
Tony Siragusa
Scott Hall
Mike Bossy
Guy Lafleur
André Leon Talley
Peter Bogdanovich
Ivan Reitman
Vangelis
John Clayton
Bobbie Nelson
Sally Kellerman
Marilyn Bergman
Manfred Thierry Mugler
Gaspard Ulliel
Dan Reeves
Don Maynard
Don Young
Michael Lang
Lawrence N. Brooks
Charles McGee
Tom Parker
Shirley Spork
Rayfield Wright
Charley Taylor
Tommy Davis
Bill Fitch
Robert Morse
Dede Robertson
Robert Krueger
Johnnie A. Jones Sr.
Gary Brooker
Brent Renaud
Ronnie Hawkins
Andy Fletcher
Ann Turner Cook
Dwayne Hickman
Mark Shields
James Rado
Bruton Smith
Marlin Briscoe
Vernon Winfrey
William “Poogie” Hart
David Warner
Issey Miyake
Bert Fields
Melissa Bank
Albert Woodfox
Barbara Ehrenreich
For all the latest Entertainment News Click Here
For the latest news and updates, follow us on Google News.