Farrell »Pharoah« Sanders turns 80 this year and sees a third or fourth spring, depending on how you count it. Early albums like »Izipho Zam (My Gifts)« have recently been reissued, as well as Sanders’ congenial collaboration with Maleem Mahmoud Ghania from 1994 or the 1991 release of »Welcome To Love«. That there is very little new material? So what. The opportunity for a rediscovery of his back catalogue seems all the more favourable: jazz has returned to the mainstream and the crates of special interest stores are lined up with compilations of the kind that the tenor saxophonist has given the term »spiritual«. Everybody wants a piece of the pie and Sanders hopefully gets the biggest piece of the pie in his old age. With »Live In Paris 1975«, the French label Transversales Disques is now releasing its first radio recording, which was made at a time of upheaval in Sanders’ work. Shortly before, he had broken with the Impulse! label and found himself in a phase of stylistic reorientation. The excellently mixed, crystal-clear recording – only the forced in-montage applause now and then clouds the sound picture – gathers essential pieces like »I Want to Talk About You« and »Your Creator Has a Masterplan«, which is rounded off by a sensational organ finale. Anyway: Danny Mixon steals the show from his bandleader more than once. On the two parts of “Love Is Here” and the “Farrell Tune” his nervous piano playing forms the beating heart of the performance recorded as a quartet, which ends with the sweaty call-and-response singing of “Love Is Everywhere” and another organ freak-out. »Live In Paris 1975« offers several facets of Sanders’ work – the gospel echoes as well as feverish bebop and free jazz borrowings. At the same time, it proves how Sanders, together with Mixon, Calvin Hill on double bass and drummer Greg Bandy, was able to get the very best out of old and new material even in a difficult phase of his career.
Pharoah Sanders
Welcome To Love
Tidal Waves