Jazz is an art form with an outsized share of mavericks, rebels, and creative dissidents who’ve built careers by blazing their own particular paths. But the tried-and-true route is still a valuable option, and New York alto saxophonist Sarah Hanahan has made the most out of the music’s supportive scaffolding.
She’s surrounded herself with mentors, paid dues as a side player in creatively challenging settings, and built up a reputation as a composer and bandleader with an ear for the stand-out younger players coming up just behind her.
After several four-night residencies at Black Cat, the Tenderloin jazz spot that’s turned into an early-warning system for heat-seeking young musicians, she’s back in the Bay Area to make her SFJAZZ Center debut with two shows at the Joe Henderson Lab Sept. 20 and a Sept. 21 performance at Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society in Half Moon Bay.
She first played Bach Dancing & Dynamite in 2023 with Ulysses Owens Jr. and Generation Y, a band that the award-winning drummer and producer assembled to showcase some of jazz’s most prodigious young players.
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“I spent all of my early 20s being a sideman,” Hanahan said. “I was with Ulysses for three years, and I’m still playing with the great drummer Joe Farnsworth,” as well as the Mingus Big Band and the Diva Orchestra, a long-running all-women jazz ensemble.
She’s soaked up knowledge from all of these situations, and not just about how to put a tune together. Hanahan has been thinking about the big picture when it comes to bandleading and presenting music effectively.
“Being a sideman, that’s your job, focusing on playing that gig great,” she said. “You take a lot of nuggets of knowledge from each one, things you want to carry forward in your name. I like how we put that piece together. I like what he or she says on the mic, speaking to the crowd, really bringing people in. I’m a sponge. The goal of leading my own band was always in the front of my mind.”
She made a major leap last year with her debut album “Among Giants,” which was released on Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Blue Engine Records. The project features Hanahan holding her own and sounding incendiary amidst a steamroller rhythm section with drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts, pianist Marc Cary, and bassist Nat Reeves.
The album’s title refers both to “those three incredible guys, but also the overall idea of that beautiful part of this music, the lineage and tradition getting passed on from one generation to another to another,” Hanahan said. “I’m so glad to be among those incredible musicians and to position myself in that lineage as an upcoming artist.”
Judging from the response, she accomplished her mission. Earning a rare five-star rating in Down Beat magazine, the album caught the ear of trumpeter and SFJAZZ Executive Artistic Director Terence Blanchard, who called her “a serious force. I think we’re going to be hearing a lot from her.”
Growing up near Boston, she bonded with her father, a drummer, over music. Early on she fell under the sway of alto sax great Jackie McLean (1931-2006), who like Cannonball Adderley and Phil Woods devised a deeply personal alto sax sound and approach in the wake of bebop patriarch Charlie Parker’s overwhelming influence.
She was too young to have studied directly with McLean, but she graduated from Jackie McLean Institute at the University of Hartford in 2019, a program filled with musicians forged in fierce crucible of McLean’s band. She was 18 when she started playing in a school ensemble led by Nat Reeves and she credits the bassist with taking her under his wing.
“Nat was really my mentor, showed me ways to play and that didn’t just include talking,” recalled Hanahan, who earned a master’s degree from Juilliard in 2022. “He showed me, don’t play right there, wait a little to come in, let it breathe, little things that make you a more mature player. He showed me the ropes.”
For this Bay Area run she’s bringing a stellar young combo built on bassist Matt Dwonszyk, “my secret weapon,” she said, noting that they met at McLean Institute. On drums she’s got Kyle Poole, a superlative accompanist whose gained widespread notice on viral videos with pianist Emmet Cohen and touring with vocal star Cécile McLorin Salvant, including a spring 2024 at the SFJAZZ Center. And on piano she’s got Miles Lennox, who graduated from the elite Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz in Los Angeles a few months ago. They’re not giants yet, but their growing fast.
Contact Andrew Gilbert at [email protected].
SARAH HANAHAN QUARTET
When & where: 7 and 8:30 p.m. Sept. 20 at SFJAZZ Center, San Francisco; $30; www.sfjazz.org; 4:30 p.m. Sept. 21 at Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, Half Moon Bay; $40 (livestream $12); bachddsoc.org
