24.09.2022 – News – Pitchfork – Nina Corcoran —   –  Details

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Pharoah Sanders

Saxophonist and jazz legend Pharoah Sanders has died, the label Luaka Bop announced. His cause of death has not been revealed, but the label wrote, «He died peacefully surrounded by loving family and friends in Los Angeles earlier this morning. Always and forever the most beautiful human being, may he rest in peace.» Sanders was 81.

— Born Farrell Sanders on October 13, 1940 in Arkansas, he originally learned how to play clarinet and drums in church before picking up the alto saxophone in high school. His decision to switch to tenor saxophone, his famed instrument, came out of necessity. «I was always trying to figure out what I wanted to do as a career. What I really wanted to do was play the saxophone—that was one of the instruments that I really loved,» Sanders told The New Yorker. «I would rent the school saxophone. You could rent it every day if you wanted to. It wasn›t a great horn. It was sort of beat-up and out of condition. I never owned a saxophone until I finished high school and went to Oakland, California. I had a clarinet, and so I traded that for a new silver tenor saxophone, and that got me started playing the tenor.» — —

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