Pharoah Sanders / PHAROAH

Deluxe Limited Edition Embossed Boxset with 24-Page Booklet, Rare Photos and Ephemera

This remastered, definitive version of Pharoah was released with Pharoah Sanders’ blessing. Frequently bootlegged, this is the first official version since 1977. Includes two previously unreleased live performances of the masterpiece “Harvest Time,” performed during a European tour in the summer of ’77.

Box set includes never-before-shared photographs, rare ephemera, and features a 24-page booklet with rarely seen photos, interviews with many of the participants, and a conversation with Pharoah himself. Liner notes by Harmony Holiday, Pierre Crépon, and Marcus J. Moore.

Follows the widely acclaimed Ppromises (Luaka Bop, 2021), a collaboration between composer Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders, featuring the London Symphony Orchestra, which was tobecome the late tenor saxophonist’s final album.

This record’s origin story is as elusive as Pharoah was about everything Pharoah. It was born out of a misunderstanding between him and the India Navigation producer Bob Cummins and was recorded at a crossroads in his career with a group of musicians so unlikely that they were never all in the same room again. There was a guitarist who was also a spiritual guru, an organist who would go on to co-write and produce “The Message,” and a classically trained pianist – his wife at the time, Bedria Sanders – who played the harmonium despite never having seen one. At times ambient and serene, at others funky and modal, Pharoah radically departed from his earlier work. It would become one of the artist’s most beloved records and one of the great works of the 20th century.