When I was eight or nine, my father took me to see Pharoah Sanders in a little bitty club. I remember it was fun being out at night, but I also remember how powerful the music was, and how I feel I’ve always recognised his very unique sound on his saxophone. It’s like something from the cosmos: raspy, but super-soulful and pure, at times very beautiful, almost sweet, but he also adds lots of details like growls, without it ever sounding harsh. And his skill was beyond any type of technical comprehension. He could play something bluesy and spiritual, then just move into these incredible flurries of notes, like he was suddenly flying through clouds of supernova dust.
My dad, a big jazz fan, made sure that I kind of understood where Pharoah’s music came from. I knew how he was once homeless, how Sun Ra gave him a place to stay, and how he became such a huge part of John Coltrane’s band. Losing Coltrane so young [of cancer, at 40, in 1967] must have been like losing the sun in the sky. But you can hear a difference in John Coltrane as well when Pharoah started playing with him. Anyone who was around Pharoah as a musician can’t have failed but be influenced.
I first met him as a teenager. I’d go see him every time he came to LA – he was always playing gigs. He’d look incredible too, with all these amazing outfits that he’d wear off as well as onstage, which was an inspiration in its way. Years later, when he asked me to play a show with him in New York, the energy when we met was more than anything I’ve ever experienced.
He was always in the moment, so interested in what was going on right here right now, which I found very beautiful in itself. Here was a man who played spiritual, cosmic music, from whom I wanted to know the secrets to the universe. But he was more interested in being in the moment and recognising the power of being in the moment. He showed me that connecting with the great beyond is sometimes about the simplest things.
And although he wasn’t concerned with the popularity of his music as such, he was always interested in his music connecting with people. The process of becoming a jazz musician is very solitary – you have to be a nerd’s nerd until you get to a point where you want to share your music and re-enter society – but he taught me how to handle that. He was always encouraging, like a third grandfather, but it would often shake me to think that this man who did so many pioneering albums 60 years ago was still so connected to the 21st century.
Take what he did with Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra last year [an album, Promises, released in 2021] – it was so immaculate, so beautiful. To know you can still find new directions towards the later part of your life, as Pharoah did, was a beautiful thing to learn from him. To know that joy for music never ends.
