Search - Pharoah Sanders :: Crescent with Love

Pharoah Sanders, consummate master of the tenor sax

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 06/25/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"First off, we are very lucky to have Pharoah Sanders, late in his career, in such a setting--the classic sax-piano-bass-drums format. Lately, he seems to prefer a more world-jazz approach, often amid the--uneven, it must be admitted--soundscapes of Bill Laswell. Don't get me wrong. I have no complaints about his late career choices. I find his gravitation toward world-jazz perfectly appropriate and often spectacular in its results.Personally, I don't think the right approach to the music contained on Crescent with Love is to consider it a Coltrane tribute. Rather, it represents for me some kind of ur-Sanders presentation of the glories of the tenor sax. I admit that for a long time I thought of it in terms of a Coltrane tribute. And it didn't work for me. I really couldn't listen to it. I had expectations for the music that just weren't there. It was only when I begin to see it as a kind of ultimate exercise by Sanders into the fabulous capability of the tenor sax to produce simply ravishing sounds that I began to see its genius.Make no mistake. Pharoah Sanders is the greatest player of the tenor sax ever. No one will ever surpass his ability to get the most out of his instrument from a shear brilliance of tone perspective. He is the absolute master. So in a sense, his career has always been about finding the right context to properly expose his tonal mastery. But isn't this a somewhat shallow and reductionistic way to consider this man's music? No, I don't think so.Because Sanders is all about allowing emotional depth to be a natural result of his technical mastery, not about conjuring up feeling for its own sake. Thus, when I listen to his absolutely absorbing rendering of that incredibly overrecorded standard, Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood," I find myself first drawn in by his ravishing tone, then enfolded in the tune's inherent poignancy, in a way that I've never been with another player. In other words, feeling becomes an outworking of a technique so profound, so overwhelming, that one's only response is yield to the inherent emotional depth of the tune.The genius of this approach is perhaps most on display on Coltrane's "Wise One." Taken at a leisurely pace, sans pyrotechnics, Sanders (and the quartet) allows the inherent beauty of the tune to naturally unfold, as it were. This is so far removed from the deconstructionist tendencies (of which I, generally, am a fan) that rule modern jazz as to render Sanders almost an archaic figure. And that's how he comes across, if we simply regard this disc as a "tribute." It's only when we take him on his own terms that his genius come fully to the fore.A note about his bandmates. These players, long time Sanders associates--William Henderson on piano, Charles Fambrough on bass, and Sherman Fergson on drums--are by no means considered to be absolutely top-shelf players (save perhaps Fambrough, and he has struggled to find fulfilling contexts for his monster chops). Yet they consistently provide the ideal playing enviornment for Sanders--and not in the mail-in-your-chops way that Sonny Rollins' bandmates for the last ten years seem to have done. Henderson, especially, seems perfectly attuned to the Sanders esthetic. He's always spot on with his glorious singing tone, understated yet provocative solos, and expansive comping.I have to admit I've neglected this disc somewhat, but it's because I couldn't get proper access to it. Like me, if you jettison the Coltrane tribute approach, I think you'll find it much more naturally reveals its inherent genius."

Fantastic!

E. Steinborn | East Coast | 09/02/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Please don't consider this a "tribute" CD to Trane. Pharoah Sanders is an absolute master of the tenor sax in his own right. He's earned it. Lonnie's lament makes me cry when I hear it...this man is deep. Great tone and phrasing. Please give him and his wonderful band the respect and admiration they all deserve. Amazing music, amazing talent."