snobb
"Crescent With Love" is a Pharoah Sanders album released on the Japanese Venus label, a label well known for its specialization in "late night jazz" (or predominantly hard bop ballads) - original recordings of renown artists, released on albums with erotic-art covers. This album is dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Coltrane's death. Even if Sanders played in Coltrane's band during his avant-garde (post-1965) times, "Crescent With Love" contains material strictly from the mainstream jazz category. Which perfectly fits under Venus label philosophy for sure.
There are five Coltrane hard bop-period songs included, plus Duke Ellington's "In A Sentimental Mood", Erroll Garner's "Misty" and other jazz standards. Sanders leads a competent acoustic quartet with double bassist Charles Fambrough, drummer Sherman Ferguson and pianist William Henderson - his regular quartet of the early 90s.
Sanders doesn't try to imitate Coltrane's sound here, he plays his own warm, a bit sentimental, soulful jazz deeply rooted in the r'n'b and blues of Sanders' youth. The trio on support do their job well, building an unpretentious background for Sanders' slow to mid-tempo soloing. The musical material is of excellent quality, so fans of regular Venus releases will find this album really attractive. Not much is offered for freer and more explosive Sanders music fans though. The album has been released in US in 1994 (with alternate cover art), and reissued a few times after, so everyone interested can find it without big problems.
