Santana Previews New Album With 'Stranger In Moscow'

03-14-2025

(Jensen) Carlos Santana has announced that his passion-filled retrospective album, Sentient, will be released via Candid Records on March 28. The album is available for pre-order now. And TODAY, paying homage to Michael Jackson he proudly releases his live, instrumental version of Jackson's "Stranger In Moscow," which features Santana's soaring guitar and beautiful melodic phrasing.

Sentient is composed of 11 dazzling tracks - three of them previously unreleased - compiled by the virtuoso guitarist, remastered and sequenced in a way that allows a new and dramatic story to emerge. As is often the case when the spark of musical magic strikes, Santana was surprised, delighted and receptive. "I'm always driven by passion, emotion and inner instinct," he says. "When I first heard these tracks floating around in the house, I said, 'Why don't we put these all in one place?'"

Listeners will be captivated as they experience a live instrumental take on Michael Jackson's haunting ballad, "Stranger in Moscow," officially released for the first time.

Recorded in 2007 with producer and drummer Narada Michael Walden's band, it's a devastating masterclass performance - Santana's guitar playing is by turns soulful and poetic, blitzing and blinding, and always breathtakingly imaginative.

"Narada knew that I loved the song, so he arranged it with his band," Santana remembers. "I showed up and we played it with no rehearsal. I'm basically singing it with my guitar. I'm visualizing Michael Jackson and what he would do - I got pretty close. I think when Michael listened to it, wherever he is, he smiled and said, 'Yeah, that's it.'"

The songs that make up Sentient are complex compositionally, but they float by like a dream. There are brilliant collaborations with Michael Jackson, Smokey Robinson, Miles Davis, Paolo Rustichelli, Darryl "DMC" McDaniels and Cindy Blackman Santana, but no matter the mood or genre - whether it's lush pop or high-intensity cosmic jazz - it's all part of a common thread. As Santana says, "From Stravinsky to James Brown, it's all the same song, meaning it's all connected to the umbilical cord of humanity and planet Earth."

"Get On," a jazz-groove masterpiece from renowned composer Paolo Rustichelli's lauded 1996 album Mystic Man, featuring the extraordinary collaboration of Santana with the iconic Miles Davis, will be released to radio for the first time on March 17.