Sarah Hanahan is onstage with an all-star band at Dizzy’s Club in New York in 2024, playing music from her aptly named debut album, Among Giants (Blue Engine). By all accounts, the 28-year-old alto saxophonist is having a ball performing swinging hard bop with her heroes and mentors.
Unlike some players from her generation, Hanahan exhibits an ebullient stage demeanor, laughing and joking with her bandmates, including bassist Nat Reeves and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts. “Every time I get on the bandstand, I’m just so grateful to be there,” she says. “As simple and as obvious as it sounds, that’s really how I feel. You’re in New York in one of the nicest clubs and all these people came to just hear you blow your horn. I’m from Marlborough, Massachusetts, so you never think that these things can happen.”
JMac Enters the Chat
Hanahan has indeed come a long way in a short time, but she’s been playing the saxophone for almost two decades. She started on the drums, having been introduced to music by her father, an amateur musician and drummer. “When I was around seven years old, I got interested in the saxophone,” she explains. “I just liked the way it looked. It was curvy and shiny. My dad got me an alto for Christmas and I’ve been playing it ever since.”
A pivotal moment came at about 16 when she was introduced to the music of Jackie McLean. “I discovered him through my teacher at that time,” she says. “He showed me a transcription book of Jackie’s solos. The first one was his famous song, ‘Bird Lives,’ which is a blues, burning fast. I learned the solo, then I heard the song for the first time on [McLean’s] record Dynasty with his quintet with Rene McLean.”
Rene McLean, Jackie’s son, would later become an important teacher and mentor for the young saxophonist, who auditioned for and entered the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the Hartt School of Music in Connecticut.
Hanahan’s immersion in McLean’s music was enhanced by the faculty, several of whom had direct ties to influential saxophonist and composer. “Abraham Burton was my saxophone teacher while I was there at the Hartt School,” she explains. “[Drummer] Eric McPherson, who played with Jackie for many years, was there, as well as the great Steve Davis on trombone. It was really a locked-and-loaded faculty. They taught me so much about Jackie and the hard bop and post-bop lineage.”
Bassist Nat Reeves, also on faculty, became an important mentor. “Nat really was the one who was always encouraging me to play,” she says. “He always believed in me from the start. He would let me sit in [at gigs] with amazing musicians. I just couldn’t believe it. I was only 18 or 19 years old. I felt like I could barely play, but he was always pulling me up on stages when I wasn’t ready. It was really something I needed as a young player, that kind of encouragement. He just saw something in me.”
Bridging the (Generation) Gap
While Hanahan looked to several heroes for musical inspiration, drummer Joe Farnsworth went in the opposite direction by seeking out younger musicians for his groups. The veteran bandleader had learned from jazz elders such as Harold Mabern, Pharoah Sanders, McCoy Tyner and George Coleman, and felt it was time to reinvigorate his own music. He first met Hanahan during the pandemic, when she came by his place for a livestream he was doing with saxophonist Eric Alexander.
“I used to love watching how people held their horns,” Farnsworth explains. “Jackie McLean, Dexter Gordon, Freddie Hubbard and Miles all held it a certain way. It’s like they’re going into a boxing ring. Sarah had that look. Then she sat in and hit a note. It was kind of raw and mean, but that note, I swear to God, gave me goosebumps. I could hear the spirit of Jackie, McCoy and Pharoah inside her. She has that connection. She has that spirit that flows through her.”
Farnsworth went on to hire Hanahan for his group of younger players, and he saw up close not only how powerful she was but also how she evolved and absorbed so many influences. “She always had her sound,” Farnsworth adds. “I know there’s talk about her as an important voice from her generation, but I’ve not heard someone like her in a long time. She’s a very special musician of any generation.”
The Scene, In the Studio
After Hanahan graduated and played around New York for a few years, the opportunity arose to make her debut album for Blue Engine, the Wynton Marsalis–run label. She made the decision to use a band featuring her heroes and mentors.
The first person she called was Nat Reeves. “Nat had spent many years with some of my all-time favorite saxophonists,” she says. “What a lot of people don’t know about Nat is that he was also on Sonny Stitt’s last tour. As someone like that who had played with all these saxophonists who are my heroes, he was my first call.”
She says that she knew right away that Jeff “Tain” Watts was the perfect drummer to complete the rhythm section. “Tain and Nat have so much history playing together, especially in Kenny Garrett’s band,” she says. “I knew I wanted that power, like a thunderstorm. Nat’s holding the whole thing down, while Tain is shooting you off to outer space with his energy.” Inspired by Marc Cary’s piano work with artists like Roy Hargrove, Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter, Hanahan asked him to take the piano chair.
Hanahan asked her former teacher Abraham Burton to produce the album. “I chose him as a producer because he knows me so well,” she says. “He’s one of my all-time favorite saxophone players and is really Jackie McLean’s progeny… He was able to [bring out] our greatest potential.”
The album has an auspicious beginning thanks to a first track featuring Coltrane’s “Welcome,” a composition that originally appeared on the saxophonist’s Kulu Sé Mama and was added to a later edition of Transition. “What made me fall in love with Trane was his more spiritual side and his ballad playing,” says Hanahan. “Once I found ‘Welcome,’ I knew I wanted to start my whole record off with that to set the tone, as a ‘Welcome to my record’ type of thing. And, of course, to tip my hat to Trane.”
She also covers “A House Is Not a Home,” a Bacharach/David tune that McLean played on his Dynasty album that had so inspired Hanahan. “Jackie played it so beautifully,” she says. “It was also my tip of the cap to the Willis Jackson version that I love. He was really the only one who played it on the tenor saxophone. He is just singing on the horn. I always aspired to do that and still am.”
A Voice of Her Own
Hanahan’s respect for the jazz tradition blends with her own aspirations as an artist. “New voices have pushed and pulled and conceptualized where jazz is today, but through it all, bebop has stayed constant and relevant,” she says. “This is what we call the lineage and the tradition, and it was my inspiration for the record. I wanted to pay respect to my mentors and to the greats who have come before me, but I also wanted to show who I am and the voice I have to contribute to this lineage.”
Hanahan is already excited to record her follow-up. “It’s in progress right now, and I’m champing at the bit to get in the recording studio,” she says. “I already have it all mapped out and conceptualized. Like, I’m ready. I can tell you that the second record is gonna have some fire.”
But Hanahan promises to keep the fun along with the fire. “Like Charlie Parker used to say, you practice all day and then when you get on the bandstand, you forget it all,” she says. “You just play. We work so hard, but music is fun. My smile onstage is just because I’m grateful and blessed to be doing what I’m doing. I have a blast. And everything’s gotta be swinging. That’s how I like to look at it. Have fun and close your eyes and get into it.” JT