This record’s origin story is as elusive as Pharoah was about everything Pharoah.

It was born out of a misunderstanding between him and the India Navigation producer Bob Cummins, and was recorded at a crossroads in his career with a group of musicians so unlikely that they were never all in the same room again. There was a guitarist who was also a spiritual guru, an organist who would go on to co-write and produce “The Message,” and a classically trained pianist—his wife at the time, Bedria Sanders—who played the harmonium despite never having seen one. At times ambient and serene, at others funky and modal, PHAROAH radically departed from his earlier work. It would become one of the artist’s most beloved records and one of the great works of the 20th century.

With Pharoah Sanders’ blessing, the limited edition embossed version of this 2 LP box set presents the definitive, remastered version of PHAROAH, his seminal record from 1977, along with two previously unreleased live performances of his masterpiece “Harvest Time.” This is the first o!cial rerelease of PHAROAH, which has been bootlegged often since its original release in 1977. These exceptional live versions of “Harvest Time”—which Pharoah performed during an intense European tour in the summer of ’77 and which are included here for the first time—turn the original, beloved composition on its head.

PHAROAH will be released a year after the legendary tenor saxophonists’ untimely passing, and two years after the release of what was to become his final album, the widely acclaimed PROMISES, a collaboration between the composer Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders, featuring the London Symphony Orchestra (Luaka Bop, 2021). The first pressing of this limited edition box set comes with an embossed cover and is accompanied by never-before-shared photographs and ephemera, as well as a 24-page booklet featuring rarely seen photographs, interviews with many of the participants, and a conversation with Pharoah himself. For seasoned listeners and new acolytes both, PHAROAH will never sound the same.