Pharoah Sanders (1940 to 2022) had one of the most distinctive tenor saxophone sounds in jazz: harmonically rich, heavy with overtones, capable of screams as raw as any the instrument has produced and of a tenderness to match. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, he made his name in John Coltrane's late ensembles of the mid 1960s, playing an expressionistic, near anarchic free jazz. His own records for Impulse! took a different path: Karma (1969), with "The Creator Has a Master Plan", and the albums that followed mixed modal grooves, African percussion and chant into a spiritual jazz that has been rediscovered by every generation since.

Pharoah Sanders (1940 to 2022) had one of the most distinctive tenor saxophone sounds in jazz: harmonically rich, heavy with overtones, capable of screams as raw as any the instrument has produced and of a tenderness to match. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, he made his name in John Coltrane's late ensembles of the mid 1960s, playing an expressionistic, near anarchic free jazz. His own records for Impulse! took a different path: Karma (1969), with "The Creator Has a Master Plan", and the albums that followed mixed modal grooves, African percussion and chant into a spiritual jazz that has been rediscovered by every generation since.