[1] Sanders' take on spiritual jazz was rooted in his inspiration from religious concepts such as karma and tawhid, and his rich, meditative performance aesthetic.

[3] As a result, Sanders was considered to have been a disciple of Coltrane or, as Albert Ayler said, "Trane was the Father, Pharoah was the Son, I am the Holy Ghost".

His initial artistic accomplishments were in the visual arts,[6] but when he was at Scipio Jones High School in North Little Rock, Sanders began playing the tenor saxophone.

Pharoah Sanders began his professional career playing tenor saxophone in Oakland, then moved to New York City in 1962.

[12] By 1963, he was playing with musicians like Billy Higgins and Don Cherry and had caught the attention of Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane.

[10] In 1965, he became a member of Coltrane's band, as the latter gravitated towards the avant-garde jazz of Albert Ayler,[13] Sun Ra, and Cecil Taylor.

Most of Sanders' best-selling work was made in the late 1960s and early 1970s for Impulse Records, including the 30-minute wave-on-wave of free jazz "The Creator Has a Master Plan" from the album Karma.

Other members of his groups in this period include bassist Cecil McBee, on albums such as Jewels of Thought, Izipho Zam, Deaf Dumb Blind, and Thembi.

From the experiments with African rhythms on the 1971 album Black Unity (with bassist Stanley Clarke) onwards he began to diversify his sound.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Sanders explored different musical modes including R&B (Love Will Find a Way), modal jazz, and hard bop.

In 1994, Sanders traveled to Morocco to record the Bill Laswell-produced album The Trance Of Seven Colors with Gnawa musician Mahmoud Guinia.

[17] In 2020, Sanders recorded an album titled Promises, with the English electronic music producer Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra.