ORDER THE BOX SET HERE — TO BE RELEASED SEPTEMBER 15
Celebrate Pharoah at Public Records, Thursday Oct 12
Featuring a conversation between Bedria Sanders, Tisziji Muñoz, and writer Andy Beta.
Love Will Find a Way
In 1977, Pharoah Sanders wrote a love song. It was an ecstatic mantra of universal love—and it was a love letter to his muse: his then wife, Bedria.
Pharoah at Jazz Festival Willisau, August 26, 1977
For one of his last stops of this brief but exemplary European tour that Pharoah took in the summer of 1977—with Hayes, Clifford Jarvis, and Khalid Moss—they stopped at the renowned Jazz Festival Willisau in Switzerland, on August 26, 1977.
Pharoah Sanders in Antwerp, Belgium, on this day, August 19, 1977
This was the second stop on a short European tour that he took the summer after he released his seminal album Pharoah.
Pharoah at the Festival de jazz de Châteauvallon, August 17, 1977
First published in the French quarterly magazine Jazz Hot, this photograph of Pharoah captured his first performance of a brief but intense tour that he took throughout Europe in August 1977—at the fabled jazz festival outside of Marseille.
“What a rush!” – Pharoah Sanders in the Daily News on this day in 1977
“There was a moment Tuesday night at the Village Vanguard when I felt like yelling out loud and launching head-first through the ceiling—that’s the kind of feverish pitch that Pharoah Sanders and his group hit me.”
– Stan Mieses, New York Daily News, August 10, 1977
For his week-long residency at the Village Vanguard in August 1977, Pharoah brought bassist Steve Neil, drummer Greg Bandy, and guitarist Tisziji Muñoz, whose “carefully wrought attacks are outstanding, placed next to Sander’s instant intensity,” Mieses wrote. “His new group is just the best he’s played as a leader. They have to be seen and heard to be believed.”
Together, they had all played on his new album released earlier that spring, Pharoah.
Pharoah Sanders at Slugs, 1969
Slugs was a legendary club in the East Village in the late sixties and early seventies where all the greats played — for a while Sun Ra had a residency there every Monday night. It was also, much like New York itself, notoriously rough. The trumpeter Lee Morgan famously died there after he was shot at the bar by his wife (it closed a few months after that).
When Bob Cummins, the man behind the record label India Navigation, photographed Pharoah there in 1969 neither of them knew that they would go on to work together. But in 1977, a full eight years later, they would join forces to record and release Pharoah’s beloved self-titled album Pharoah.
Announcing The Harvest Time Project
In honor of Pharoah Sanders and the long-awaited remastering and re-release of his seminal record from 1977 Pharoah, we’re launching the Harvest Time Project.
Here we’ll share the results of the extensive research we did throughout Europe and North America to support the release of the new Pharoah box set, sharing the insights made by a dedicated research team, including essays by Harmony Holiday, Marcus J. Moore, and Pierre Crépon—whose writing appears in the box set—among many others.
Announcing Pharoah, a new box set featuring the definitive remaster of his seminal 1977 record and rare live versions of “Harvest Time”
With Pharoah Sanders’ blessing, this forthcoming box set, due September 15, will present the definitive, remastered version of Pharoah, his seminal record from 1977, along with two previously unreleased live performances of his masterpiece “Harvest Time." An accompanying 24-page booklet includes a treasure trove of rarely seen photographs, archival materials, interviews with many of the participants, and a conversation with Pharoah himself.