When you have worked with some of the most significant names over the past 50 years of jazz history and thus become a player of some significance yourself, you might be entitled to look back at your achievements with some satisfaction.
For Pharoah Sanders, however, while he acknowledges that he may have a certain status, the past is just that: the past. What really matters is the next gig.
Sanders, whose next gig happens to be the headline concert on the opening night of Glasgow Jazz Festival, is by no means alone among jazz players in his desire to move on. His fellow saxophonist Benny Waters appeared to actually run to his gigs (he moved at a loping pace at the best of times) well into his 80s and kept playing right up to his death in 1998, aged 96. Closer to home, another saxophonist Bobby Wellins, who won the Parliamentary Jazz Awards' Musician of the Year title this year aged 76, is still perpetually on a journey in search of the elusive perfection.
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