With a career spanning more than 40 years and no less than 30 albums, Pharoah Sanders has long been revered in jazz circles. Combining African and Eastern influences with the distinctive ‘shrieking’ manner in which he plays the tenor sax, he has created some of the most spiritual music to have ever been recorded. For this Anthology, Soul Brother in collaboration with Universal, draw together 18 tracks (13 on vinyl) of Pharoah’s major compositions, covering the period 1967-1996 and incorporating material from the Impulse, Theresa, Arista and Verve labels. To highlight particular tracks would be pointless since they are all worthy inclusions. My advice is to grab a copy and sample for yourself the music of a true jazz great. If I were to make one small criticism it would be that a number of the longer cuts have been edited in order to allow the maximum number of tracks to be included. Personally I would have preferred an extended 3-disc package so the full-length versions could be featured. I guess cost restrictions prevented this.
