Promises: Floating Points with Shabaka Hutchings

In 2019, the composer Floating Points (Sam Shepherd) converged with spiritual jazz icon Pharoah Sanders to create Promises, a breathtaking album-length composition and mesmerizing journey also featuring the London Symphony Orchestra. Issued two years later, the recording has become one of the most acclaimed releases of our time.

On September 20, Floating Points will premiere Promises in full at the Hollywood Bowl. The performance will bring to life a recording that capped Sanders’ profoundly influential six decades in music.

Shepherd began working with Sanders after the tenor saxophonist heard Floating Points’ debut album, Elaenia, in 2015. The two reconnected often, and as Shepherd gained further attention and success for the sublime Floating Points electronic albums Reflections: Mojave Desert (2017) and Crush (2019), his bond with Sanders grew into a creative partnership that bore the meditative Promises. Upon its release, critics lined up to sing its praises, with NPR jazz critic Nate Chinen calling it “grand in scale but startlingly intimate in its effect.”

The pair were developing this Hollywood Bowl debut in the months before the tenor saxophonist died in 2022, and now Shepherd will fulfill this wish with orchestra and an all-star line-up handpicked, in part, by Sanders himself.