Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders And The London Symphony Orchestra

Promises LUAKA BOP. CD/DL/LP

Rapturous, harmonious spiritual jazz/electronica/ classical hybrid.

The idea of Pharoah Sanders working with an electronic music producer seems a bit of a reach, even for a musician with such a restless questing imperative. But Sam ‘Floating Points’ Shepherd is a creator with a masterplan, and form in this zone, having incorporated the resonances of spiritual jazz into his earlier sound designs and mentored the young Nubya Garcia. Here, he focuses his playing on a short recurrent phrase, redolent of both harp and harpsichord, and artfully manoeuvres the London Symphony Orchestra around it in movements that recall both Henryk Górecki symphonies and Alice Coltrane’s strings-assisted World Galaxy. It’s a subtly sophisticated piece, but it also creates space for Sanders to showcase his tender, measured, lyrical phrasing, abstracted scatting and, 34 minutes into this 46-minute marvel, a brief sputtering blast of free saxophone energy that proves, at 80, his fire remains potent.