Promises

Sam Shepherd, who records as Floating Points, spent years coaxing the saxophonist Pharoah Sanders into the studio. Sanders had played with John Coltrane and was eighty when they made this, his last album before he died. The whole record is one continuous piece in nine movements, built on a seven-note phrase that repeats and shifts the entire way through. Shepherd plays keyboards and electronics, Sanders plays sax and at times just hums, and the London Symphony Orchestra rises behind them. It moves like one long breath.