Concept
My initial encounter with Ferrell Sanders’s work, better known as Pharaoh Sanders, was in 2019–2020 with the release of the album «Promises”—a collaboration between Pharaoh Sanders, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the British electronic musician Floating Points.
This album was unlike anything in the music I had heard before. We’ll return to it later, but what makes it noteworthy is that each track featured a looping composition within it; consequently, each track was titled a „movement.“ The album itself comprised nine movements. Essentially, every track on this album could be listened to in a looped format, and the acoustic palette of the album was so profoundly moving that I began listening to all of Pharaoh Sanders’s albums in chronological order.
Research Objective
There isn’t a wealth of material available online regarding Pharaoh Sanders. There is one biographical book and several text-based interviews. In this text, I have compiled everything I found about the work of this remarkable jazz musician, and the primary goal of this study is to provide not a strictly academic, but rather a journalistic account of Pharaoh Sanders’s creative life and the legacy this musician left behind.The text was compiled by studying key recordings, some archived interviews, and by reviewing critical reviews of these albums. Incidentally, almost all critical reviews of Pharaoh Sanders’s music are enthusiastic.
