Elevation

VINYL FORMAT. A shining example of technical virtuosity and conceptual vision, Pharoah Sanders came to prominence like so many jazz greats before him: having honed his professional craft playing in local rhythm and blues acts in Oakland, CA, Sanders traveled East in 1961 to become part of the rising avant-garde jazz circle of New York City, and, per the protocol of the honorable and sacred lineage of jazz musicians, bloomed into his own under the creative support of an elder's weathered wing -- in this case, playing tenor saxophone with John Coltrane through the early- to mid-1960s, participating and to a great extent influencing the increasingly free-formed jazz experimentations that Coltrane's outfit would become deeply immersed in throughout this era. The major contribution that Sanders and his contemporaries in this newly-budding genre of the early 1970s discovered was the higher form of expressionism, not through absolute refutation and denunciation of structure, but through the careful analysis and engagement with the basic necessities of musical simplicity to create something completely boundless within the parameters of traditional structure: an autonomous zone of instrumental catharsis that allowed equally the unrestrained bursting of brass screams and the meditative soothing of repetitive bass refrains and lush melodic chords -- a perfectly boundless synthesis of free expression and wise musical grounding. This latest reissue compiled by Slow To Speak's Francis Englehardt and Paul Nickerson highlights with equal reverence and profound awe the transitive properties of Sanders' masterful arrangement and musical prophecy, featuring two original works of the tenor great, 'Elevation' & 'Astral Traveling,' along with his absolutely breathtaking early groundwork with Alice Coltrane with the classic 'Journey In Satchidananda.'