Sarah Hanahan Quartet At Joe Henderson Lab

Sarah Hanahan Quartet
Joe Henderson Lab / SFJAZZ Center
San Francisco, CA
September 20, 2025

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 was alive with that tight-room voltage you could taste. She walked out in a black-and-white patterned jacket, grinning like someone who came to work and loved the work. Alto at the ready. Quartet was locked in: Kyle Poole on drums, Matt Dwonszyk on bass, Miles Lennox on piano. The applause felt like permission—go, do it, take it further.

They opened with "Call to Prayer," a blaze of air and intent. The attack was immediate, not cautious. Hanahan shaped the horn like a blade and a beacon—cut and light, cut and light—leaning back on long notes until the room bent around the pitch. Fragments echoed the spiritual voltage of John Coltrane—phrases that felt like they remembered "A Love Supreme" without needing to say the words. The band breathed with her. Poole's ride was a wire, tight and humming. Lennox pressed, released, pressed—then sprinted. The bassist grounded it, then rocked the instrument like a bell that you could not stop hearing after it was struck. The landing was clean. The place exploded. Hands up, heads back, because power did that to a crowd that did not expect this much power this fast.

She spoke—quick, bright, a little breathless—"My goodness, we are thrilled to be here tonight... my first ever time playing at SFJAZZ." She nodded across the hall to the great Ron Carter, who was playing his fourth and final night at SFJAZZ. She acknowledged it like a fan who became a pro and still respected the chain: "We were just with him upstairs... I was staring at him so hard." The room laughed with her, and the humility landed. Reverence did not slow her down; it sharpened the edge.

Second tune: Gary Bartz's "I've Known Rivers," lifted from a Langston Hughes poem and carried like a banner. Lennox started strong, Hanahan cheered him in short bursts—"yeah... hey, hey"—little sparks that turned the solo into a sprint. There was sweat. There was focus. She hit the ceiling—then higher—then higher again! Dropped low, shot back up. Outside the Lab, a fire truck slid past the big windows. Red lights strobed across the band and audience. It looked staged, but it was not. The siren color became part of the song, part of the city, part of the night. She repeated a single note until it trembled, then resolved the band into a landing that felt earned, not easy. Big release. Bigger cheers. She folded her hands and bowed like a fighter who knew the round was hers.

And then the chant—voice and horn, hands and tambourine, yelled and squawked, four or five piercing yelps that cut through the groove like cold air—"I've Known Rivers." The drummer smiled at people wandering by outside and still never dropped the pocket. The bass resonated with long reverbs, like low thunder rumbling beneath the floorboards. They layered the refrain again and again—eight times, ten times—until repetition became ritual, became a trance, became something older than the building. Sudden stop. Shock silence. Detonation of applause. This was not polite jazz. This was motion, force, sweat, community.

She wiped her face, laughed at herself, and told the truth: "See! I told you it was gonna be a journey!... I am sweating and stuff. I am getting older." The room howled because she was 29, and everyone got the joke. The band got 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 Have Known Rivers.'" The message was constant—new material, old lineage, same fire.

This was a "Cowboy bebop," tune, she joked, and the band launched "We Bop!" Swung with a grin and a steel core. Lennox took flight—hands like hammers and brushes at once—Poole pushing him into the red and catching every landing—massive applause. Bass grabbed the spotlight and walked it hard, then broke into a sprint. Saxophone darted in, traded shots with the drums—call, response, collision. The tune became a game of chicken, and nobody blinked. High squeaks, throat wails, precision chaos—the kind that was only possible when the floor was solid and trust was total.

Here was the larger point. This was what work looked like when love and discipline merged. Not romance. Not myth. Reps. Hours. Choices. A young alto player who had studied the tradition and showed the receipts—not as a résumé dump, but in the way the band listened and adjusted, the way phrases sharpened and relaxed, the way a ball of sound could widen into space and then snap tight on command. The past was not a museum here; it was a power source. (Yes, Among Giants (Blue Engine Records, 2024) pointed the way, and heavy hitters recognized her talent early—but the proof was in this set.)

Last tune, "Consequence." The title said it all. The cost of this kind of set was breath, muscle and nerve. Poole drove like a drummer who enjoyed the burn. Dwonszyk gave the music legs—heavy when needed, feathered when space opened. Lennox pulled chorus after chorus from the core of the piano and never phoned in a line. Hanahan kept shouting the band on—short cries, fists in the air, head thrown back—like a foreman who was also on the line, pulling with the crew, not from the office. The piece ramped up, peaked, and then edged into overdrive. Then a cutoff that landed like a stamp. Silence, stunned. Then the sound of a place losing its mind, followed by a standing ovation, fast and unanimous.

She asked, "Did you have a good time, San Francisco?"—a layup, sure, but earned. The answer was thunder. She hit 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 will be." It read like humor, but it was 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 could 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 stuck was the ethic. The quartet played like the room mattered, like every eye in the first two rows was a meter reading the truth. The music was loud without being crude, fast without being careless, reverent without being trapped. Culture was built this way—night after night, set after set, small rooms became crucibles where craft was tested and identity was shaped. Power and humility. Velocity and listening. Work and joy.

"Please relax, close your eyes," she 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."

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