How the Hollywood Bowl premiere of Floating Points’ ‘Promises’ honors Pharoah Sanders
They didn’t have much time, says Sam Shepherd.
The London-based Shepherd, who composes, records and performs under the name Floating Points, remembers thinking he was flying out to Los Angeles to help with production duties on an album by his friend, the jazz legend Pharoah Sanders, but when he arrived he learned Sanders was interested in recording music composed by Shepherd.
“I thought I was there to help Pharoah produce an album,” says Shepherd, talking publicly for the first time about his work with the innovative improviser, who died last September at 81. “I knew that I only had like a week in L.A. and he was also [about to go] off as well, so I was like, ‘Well, [laughs] what are we gonna do?’
“I asked him if he wouldn’t mind … leaving me there to concoct something, and it was a weird couple of days. I think I wrote nine or 10 pieces of music. One of them was ‘Promises,’” says Shepherd, referring to their gorgeous 2021 collaboration, which blends Sanders’ saxophone improvisations with Shepherd’s keys and electronics and string arrangements performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. “That’s kind of how the piece was born, out of a frantic writing session.”
‘Promises’ made
Shepherd had met Sanders a few years earlier through a mutual friend who’d asked the Manchester-born composer to help the saxophonist around London during a visit there. Talking music, taking walks and sharing meals, they developed a friendship of their own, and Shepherd’s consideration for the older musician is apparent during our discussion about how he’d chosen a recording studio for them to work.
“I was looking for a studio that had good step-free access — actually, that’s all I was looking for,” he says, explaining that he was concerned about his friend’s mobility. “I didn’t want to make him walk up and down stairs.”
Shepherd says that he was thrilled with Sargent Recorders in Los Angeles’ Historic Filipinotown. “It’s a beautiful studio,” he says, adding that his friend, Nigel Godrich, producer of Radiohead, U2 and Paul McCartney among others, encouraged him to make the album there. “Nigel was like, ‘This is where you’re gonna want to record this.’” (Shepherd says he later asked Godrich to “hold his hand” during the U.K. recording of the London Symphony Orchestra: “He came down and basically sat there and was like, ‘You’re fine,’” he laughs.)
With the clock ticking, Shepherd worked and Sanders would check in. “Pharoah would come in occasionally just to hear what was happening. I remember him walking into the studio that one day after I’d recorded what was the background of ‘Promises.’ And he just — something was different about his face that day. He was kind of nodding, and he was like, ‘This is it,’” recalls Shepherd.
“I remember that evening of the first take me and my friend, Stella [Mozgawa] — she’s the drummer in Warpaint — we drove out to Joshua Tree,’ he says. “We sat in her car by the bottom of Mount Nebo. It was a really hot night and we just opened the car doors and sat there with the sun just disappearing. We played it and we’re like, ‘This is the record.’”
Dropping science
Shepherd has one of the more impressive backup plans of any musician: He earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience and epigenetics at University College London before deciding to focus on music, which he’d also been working on since childhood.
“My dad was always very keen to take me to concerts,” says Shepherd. “I remember seeing the U.K. premiere ‘The Desert Music’ and things like this. [Minimalist composer] Steve Reich was there and I went to meet him.”
He studied jazz piano and composition, and he sang six services a week with the Manchester Cathedral Choir as a boy, which he describes as “hardcore” but formative for his musical education. “You’re becoming a professional musician without even trying because you’re a kid,” he says. “So in terms of musicianship, I think it was so good for me and I wrote a lot of music for that choir … Some of it still I think they sometimes sing it at the cathedral.”
He praises the education he got and the kindness and generosity of the musicians he learned from in and around Manchester. “I took from it what really interested me and then really followed that passion,” says Shepherd, who also DJed, started a record label and released the albums “Elaenia,” “Reflections: Mojave Desert” and “Crush” in the ensuing years.
And as for science? “I love science,” he says, mentioning he’d just had lunch with a former colleague who’d been awarded a professorship. “I do miss it, but I’m not sure that science misses me.”
The legend and the lion
Released during the pandemic on Luaka Bop Records, the rich, moving melodies that Sanders and Shepherd created together was a balm for many who felt isolated during the pandemic, and Pitchfork deemed it “a clear late-career masterpiece” for Sanders. But it had never been performed live — until now.
Shepherd and an all-star group of musicians, including Dan Snaith (aka Caribou), Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet), Kara-Lis Coverdale, Hinako Omori, Sun Ra Arkestra, the Los Angeles Studio Orchestra and more, are preparing a one-time-only performance at the Hollywood Bowl on Sept. 20.
“Pharaoh and I were talking about doing the show at the Hollywood Bowl, one time only, which is kind of why we’re doing it,” says Shepherd. “Pharaoh had just done a show in England a few months before he died and he was buzzing. He was so excited that he did this show and then I was going to go visit him to discuss this show and he was so stoked to be playing again. And then suddenly he passed away and I thought, ‘Well, that’s it.’”
But Shepherd said Sanders often asked after Shabaka Hutchings, a saxophone player they both knew — “How is our friend Shabaka doing? He plays big and strong like a lion,” Shepherd remembers Sanders saying — and suddenly the idea of putting together a show to honor Pharoah Sanders made sense. Hutchings would need to be the one to play Sanders’s part.
“I’m using a lot of people that are very dear to me, so the nice thing about the show is that everyone on stage is a good friend of mine,” says Shepherd, who has spent the last year composing the score for a ballet scheduled to premiere in San Francisco in January. “The spirit of Pharaoh … it has to live on.”
Hands-on production
“Promises” combines saxophone, strings, keyboards and electronics in one continuous piece of music, one so intimate that you can at times hear the touch of a hand on an instrument. Shepherd, who counts both jazz pianist Bill Evans and the English experimental group Talk Talk as influences, says this was by design — though he thinks it has largely gone unnoticed.
“It’s interesting, you and the guys from the Animal Collective are the only persons that have mentioned to me that they’ve picked up on that. Animal Collective actually gave me the name, ‘in-between sounds’ — where the actual mechanical touch and the space in the room and the pedals crunching and the floor creaking and the switch of the tremolo on the Hammond are audible. And it brings you that little bit closer to the person playing it on the record. And yes, you get those on the Talk Talks and that was a very conscious decision.”
Shepherd says that not only will the live performance include micing up the band in that way, but he’s also including notes in the score, which will be published, that explain that these “in-between sounds” are important to the piece.
One of the most memorable moments of “Promises” was captured when Shepherd put an extra microphone near Sanders and caught the sound of his breath and nearly inaudible vocalizations.
“That was a total surprise to us in the studio, but we caught it because he had a microphone right there,” says Shepherd. “He sounded just right there in between your brain, and so we were lucky with that. By capturing all those in-between times, we also managed to capture this beautiful moment of Pharoah.”
‘Promises’ featuring Floating Points with Shabaka Hutchings and more
When: 8 p.m., Sept. 20
Where: Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave, Los Angeles
Information: www.hollywoodbowl.com/events/performances/2360/2023-09-20/promises