Photo series: The Harvest Time Project at LGW23 by Juri Hiensch

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As one of the special projects of Le Guess Who? 2023, the festival celebrated the legacy of spiritual jazz icon Pharoah Sanders and his seminal composition, Harvest Time (1977). During the closing day of the festival, The Harvest Time Project: A Tribute to Pharoah Sanders brought together Irreversible Entanglements, Domenico Lancellotti, Hamid Drake, and special guest (and original Pharoah guitarist) Tisziji Muñoz, under the musical direction of Joshua Abrams (Natural Information Society, original member of The Roots, etc.).

Our residential photographer Juri Hiensch was present to capture the project and the special moments surrounding it, both backstage as well as on stage.

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four photos of members of The Harvest Time Project

The Harvest Time Project at Le Guess Who? 2023 followed Luaka Bop's reissue of the 1977 album Pharoah, which features Harvest Time: a radical departure from Sanders’ earlier work. The re-issue will be accompanied by never-before-heard live recordings, archival material and extensive liner notes and photography. Misunderstood upon its release, the album has long been a holy grail and has been bootlegged for years. It will now be presented in its definitive, remastered version.

"In 2017, Pharoah Sanders was still performing at this festival, in this same hall. Meanwhile, this giant of free jazz, the spiritual son of John Coltrane, is no longer with us. Reason therefore for this tribute, built around Harvest Time: a beautiful piece from the fairly obscure, but in the meantime reintroduced album Pharoah. With various drummers/percussionists (Hamid Drake, no less), bassists, horns, the guitarist who also played on the original and, no less, Le Guess Who? favorite Moor Mother, conjuring declamations and when she plays with small percussion, the effect is almost as crushing. Yet again, with an underlying drone. A blessing for the soul" - OOR

two members of The Harvest Time Project hugging on stage

About Pharoah Sanders
Pharoah Sanders was an icon of spiritual jazz. He was handpicked by John Coltrane to play on his late-career masterpieces, and thereafter released a string of expansive recordings under his own name for the Impulse! label, which have been cited as a pivotal influence by everyone from Prince to Iggy Pop to Marvin Gaye. With Coltrane, Sanders recorded some of the most revered — and controversial — albums in jazz history, embracing a wild, anarchic sound that would reverberate across genres for decades to come. Sanders’ subsequent solo output was similarly bold and influential, and eventually won him a GRAMMY in the late 1980s.

In 2016, the National Endowment for the Arts bestowed him with its prestigious Jazz Master title, the genre’s highest honor. In 2017, Pharoah Sanders performed at Le Guess Who? as part of the program curated by Shabazz Palaces. His last album Promises, released in 2021 with Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra, was heralded as “a late-career masterpiece,” and was awarded Album of The Year in several national newspapers around the world, as well as TIME Magazine and The New York Times. Pharoah Sanders passed away on September 24, 2022.

four photos that portray members of The Harvest Time Project on stage during their performance at Le Guess Who Festival. in one of the photos, all the members are lined up, thanking the audience

"'Harvest Time' is so powerful because it contains at least a half-dozen distinct and possibly contradictory feelings at the same time. It’s peaceful but with an undercurrent of unease; it’s warm and welcoming, yet it makes most sense in darkness; it sounds folky and ancient, yet could only be fully rendered following the structural earthquakes of modernism; it comes across as simple and approachable while it’s overlaid with a blurring film of strangeness." - Pitchfork