Timbral Virtuosity: Pharoah Sanders, Sonic Heterogeneity, and the Jazz Avant-garde in the 1960s and 70s

Abstract Saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Pharoah Sanders is best known for recording a handful of meditative, cosmologically-inclined free jazz classics from the 1960s and 1970s, including “The Creator Has a Master Plan.” This article looks at the reasons for these recordings' popularity at the time, arguing that the key to understanding these works can be found in Sanders's use of timbral variation as a formal element. In considering what I call “timbral virtuosity” in Sanders's work, this article discusses the relationships that such a focus allows us to more clearly see between avant-garde jazz, fusion, and contemporaneous popular music from rock to soul.