Pharoah Sanders

Church hymns, played on clarinet in Little Rock, Arkansas, were where Ferrell Sanders began. After moving to New York in 1962, often homeless, he adopted the name Pharoah, and by 1965 he had joined John Coltrane's band, playing on Ascension and Meditations.

His tenor saxophone overblew, split into multiphonics and poured out sheets of sound, while ideas like karma and tawhid guided records such as Tauhid and Karma, whose 30-minute 'The Creator Has a Master Plan' rides Leon Thomas's yodelling and Lonnie Liston Smith's piano. Later he explored African rhythms on Black Unity, then R&B, modal jazz and hard bop.

Promises, made with Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra and released in 2021, was his first major new album in nearly two decades. He died the following year, aged 81.