Sarah Hanahan Brings the Heat to SFJAZZ
Sarah Hanahan and Matt Dwonszyk. Photo: Steve Roby
A knockout. No hedging, no warmup lap—impact from the first bar and the room knew it.
Sold-out first set at the Joe Henderson Lab—Sarah Hanahan’s SFJAZZ debut. Outside, faces pressed close to the glass, the Lab alive with that tight-room voltage you can taste. She walks out in a black-and-white patterned jacket, grinning like someone who came to work and loves the work. Alto at the ready. Quartet locked in: Kyle Poole on drums, Matt Dwonszyk on bass, Miles Lennox on piano. The applause feels like permission—go, do it, take it further.
They open with “Call to Prayer,” a blaze of air and intent. The attack is immediate, not cautious. Hanahan shapes the horn like a blade and a beacon—cut and light, cut and light—leaning back on long notes until the room bends around the pitch. Fragments echo the spiritual voltage of Trane—phrases that feel like they remember “A Love Supreme” without needing to say the words. The band breathes with her. Poole’s ride is a wire, tight and humming. Lennox presses, releases, presses—then sprints. The bassist grounds it, then rocks the instrument like a bell you can’t stop hearing after it’s struck. The landing is clean. The place explodes. Hands up, heads back, because power does that to a crowd that didn’t expect this much power this fast.
She speaks—quick, bright, a little breathless—“My Goodness, we are thrilled to be here tonight… my first ever time playing at SFJAZZ.” She nods across the hall to the great Ron Carter, who is playing his fourth and final night at SFJAZZ. She acknowledges it like a fan who became a pro and still respects the chain: “We were just with him upstairs… I was staring at him so hard.” The room laughs with her, and the humility lands. Reverence doesn’t slow her down; it sharpens the edge.
Second tune: Gary Bartz’s “I’ve Known Rivers,” lifted from Langston Hughes and carried like a banner. Lennox starts strong, Hanahan cheering him in short bursts—“yeah… hey, hey”—little sparks that turn the solo into a sprint. There’s sweat. There’s focus. She hits the ceiling—then higher—then higher again!! Drops low, shoots back up. Outside the Lab, a fire truck slides past the big windows. Red lights strobe across the band and audience. It looks staged, but it isn’t. The siren color becomes part of the song, part of the city, part of the night. She repeats a single note until it trembles, then resolves the band into a landing that feels earned, not easy. Big release. Bigger cheers. She folds her hands and bows like a fighter who knows the round was hers.
Kyle Poole. Photo: Steve Roby
And then the chant—voice and horn, hands and tambourine, yells and squawks, four or five piercing yelps that cut through the groove like cold air—“I’ve Known Rivers.” The drummer smiles at people wandering by outside and still never drops the pocket. The bass resonates with long reverbs, like low thunder rumbling beneath the floorboards. They layer the refrain again and again—eight times, ten times—until repetition becomes ritual, becomes trance, becomes something older than the building. Sudden stop. Shock silence. Detonation of applause. This is not polite jazz. This is motion, force, sweat, community.
“See! I told you it was gonna be a journey!”
She wipes her face, laughs at herself, and tells the truth: “See! I told you it was gonna be a journey!… I’m sweating and stuff. I’m getting older.” The room howls because she’s 29 and everyone gets the joke. The band gets their flowers—names called, histories traced, gratitude spoken out loud, the way working bands affirm the unit and remind the crowd that the job is a team sport. Then the pivot: “That first song was new … ‘Call and Prayer’… and we just ended with a Gary Bartz… ‘I’ve Known Rivers.’” The message is constant—new material, old lineage, same fire.
This is a “Cowboy bebop,” tune, she jokes, and the band launches “We Bop!” Swing with a grin and a steel core. Lennox takes flight—hands like hammers and brushes at once—Poole pushing him into the red and catching every landing—massive applause. Bass grabs the spotlight and walks it hard, then breaks into a sprint. Sax darts in, trades shots with the drums—call, response, collision. The tune becomes a game of chicken, and nobody blinks. High squeaks, throat wails, precision chaos—the kind that’s only possible when the floor is solid and the trust is total.
Miles Lennox. Photo: Steve Roby
Here’s the larger point. This is what work looks like when love and discipline merge. Not romance. Not myth. Reps. Hours. Choices. A young alto player who has studied the tradition and shows the receipts—not as a résumé dump but in the way the band listens and adjusts, the way phrases sharpen and relax, the way a ball of sound can widen into space and then snap tight on command. The past isn’t a museum here; it’s a power source. (“Yes, Among Giants pointed the way, and heavy hitters recognized her talent early—but the proof is in this set.)
Last tune, “Consequence.” Title says it all. The cost of this kind of set is breath, muscle, and nerve. Poole drives like a drummer who enjoys the burn. Dwonszyk gives the music legs—heavy when needed, feathered when space opens. Lennox pulls chorus after chorus from the core of the piano and never phones a line in. Hanahan keeps shouting the band on—short cries, fists in the air, head thrown back—like a foreman who’s also on the line, pulling with the crew, not from the office. The piece ramps up, peaks, and then edges into overdrive. Then a cutoff that lands like a stamp. Silence, stunned. Then the sound of a place losing its mind, followed by a standing ovation, fast and unanimous.
Photo: Steve Roby
She asks, “Did you have a good time, San Francisco?”—a layup, sure, but earned. The answer is thunder. She hits the lobby to sign her debut CDs before the second set, joking to the crowd, “Look at buying my CD as an investment… the more you buy, the richer you’ll be.” It reads like humor, but it’s also a mission: invest in the present tense—this band, this work, this night. No nostalgia, no future-casting—now.
Weakness? Not much. A tendency to lean into maximal altitude for effect—those repeated top-of-the-horn screams can crowd the air if overused—but here they felt earned, placed like exclamation points at the edge of control. Better to risk intensity than coast. Better to sweat. Better to push
What sticks is the ethic. The quartet plays like the room matters, like every eye in the first two rows is a meter reading the truth. The music is loud without being crude, fast without being careless, reverent without being trapped. Culture gets built this way—night after night, set after set, small rooms becoming crucibles where craft is tested and identity gets hammered into shape. Power and humility. Velocity and listening. Work and joy.
“Please relax, close your eyes,” she’d said earlier, promising a journey. The journey delivered—up and up and up, then home, then out into the night with ears still ringing and the windows still pulsing with phantom red light. Mission complete.
Setlist: “Call to Prayer,” “I’ve Known Rivers,” “We Bop!,” and “Consequence.”
