Sarah Hanahan Quartet

A short list of the most exciting young alto saxophonists to emerge in the last five years would have to include Sarah Hanahan. Her incendiary performances were already turning heads via far-flung touring with the Mingus Big Band, drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. and Generation Y, Sherrie Miracle and the Diva Orchestra, and drummer Joe Farnsworth. But the release of her 2024 debut album Among Giants catapulted her into a whole new realm, earning a rare five-star review from DownBeat. She brings the magic of that album to the Joe Henderson Lab with her powerful quintet. 

More than holding her own with veteran masters Marc Cary (piano), Nat Reeves (bass) and Jeff “Tain” Watts (drums), Hanahan completed the journey from apprentice to leader, playing with the intensity, self-possession and audacious creativity of a major-league talent. She’d studied with Reeves at the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the Hartt School of Music as an undergrad and with Cary at Juilliard, where she earned a Master’s in 2022. That same year Hanahan was tapped for the first-ever class of NPR Jazz Night in America’s Youngbloods and featured as one of five “up-and-coming jazz geniuses who are revolutionizing their genre” in their 20s. She’s been ascending steadily ever since.