Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders - Promises

Promises brought together Sam Shepherd — the British producer known as Floating Points — with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra, and became one of the most acclaimed jazz-adjacent records of the 2020s, shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. It was also one of Sanders' final major statements before his death in 2022, closing a career that ran from playing alongside John Coltrane in the mid-1960s to this hushed, orchestral collaboration nearly six decades later. Built on a repeating seven-note harpsichord figure that Shepherd wrote before Sanders had even heard it, the record blurs the line between composition and improvisation more successfully than almost anything else from the period, and gave a whole new generation an entry point into Sanders' catalogue.

Pharoah Sanders made his name in the mid-1960s playing alongside John Coltrane before becoming one of the defining voices of spiritual jazz through records like Karma. Floating Points is the recording name of Sam Shepherd, a British producer and classically trained composer who has spent his career moving between dancefloor electronics and more expansive, orchestral work. The two met through mutual admiration rather than any obvious shared scene, and Promises — completed with the London Symphony Orchestra — became the meeting point between Sanders' six decades of searching saxophone playing and Shepherd's patient, detail-obsessed production. It was Sanders' last major recorded statement; he died in September 2022.