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Known on dancefloors and tastefully progressive U.K. radio programs as Floating Points, producer and DJ Sam Shepherd has applied his love for gritty funk, slick R&B, and avant-garde jazz to house, techno, and orchestral compositions that have tended to be equally stimulating through club sound systems and headphones. After trickling out tracks for several years, the project broke through to a wider audience with the full-length Elaenia (2015), a richly produced album that, for many, served as an introduction to Shepherd's hybrid style. His wider-scoped works since then include the more synth-focused Crush (2019) and Promises (2021), a collaboration with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra. Cascade, a kinetic full-length primarily consisting of club tracks, appeared in 2024.

Shepherd launched Floating Points in 2008 by releasing some white-label singles plus a bootleg remix of Sun Ra's "I'll Wait for You." BBC DJ Gilles Peterson picked up on both and featured the two tracks on his Worldwide radio program. Even though Shepherd was finishing his PhD in neuroscience, he found time in 2009 to partner with Rinse FM left-field DJ Alexander Nut and form Eglo, a label that became revered for releases from the likes of FunkinEven and frequent Shepherd collaborator Fatima. Among Shepherd's own early highlights for the label were cuts like "Vacuum Boogie" and "Peoples Potential."

The producer's output became increasingly spacious and musical, as heard in the progression traced through cuts such as "Sais," "King Bromeliad," and "Nuits Sonores." Additionally, Shepherd led the 16-member Floating Points Ensemble for a Ninja Tune single and BBC Maida Vale session that bridged 4hero's chamber soul and the work of contemporary West Coast arranger/composer Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. In 2015, after over a dozen releases and roughly as many remixes, Shepherd released the debut Floating Points album, Elaenia, through his Pluto label in the U.K. and David Byrne's Luaka Bop in the U.S. It was celebrated by almost every outlet that covered it, including Resident Advisor, whose staff declared the album the best of the year. In 2016, after Katy B's Honey sported a track produced by Shepherd and Kieran Hebden, Floating Points returned with Kuiper, an expansive two-track EP. That August, just prior to a U.S. tour, Shepherd and his band rehearsed, recorded, and were filmed in the Mojave Desert. The visit was documented with Reflections: Mojave Desert, a heavier affair released the following June.

In 2019, Shepherd participated in the ongoing Late Night Tales series, creating a DJ mix that included work of his own as well as deep-cut ambient, jazz, and global soul selections. Later that year he released Crush, his second studio album, on Ninja Tune. A raw and uncompromising blast of experimental -- yet accessible -- electronica, it was inspired by his solo live experiments on a Buchla modular synth while opening for the xx. Floating Points returned to Luaka Bop in 2021 with Promises, a nine-movement work created with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra, featuring artwork by Julie Mehretu. He returned to club material with a series of singles for Ninja Tune, including "Vocoder" and "Problems," which were collected on the vinyl EP 2022. Shepherd continued in this direction with Cascade, his 2024 full-length, which followed the more club-driven mode of Crush. ~ David Jeffries & Andy Kellman

Tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders was among the most important contributors to the evolution of spiritual jazz, creating emotionally complex and uncompromisingly passionate music for over 60 years. Sanders got his start playing alongside John Coltrane in the mid-'60s, just as Coltrane's playing was turning to more chaotic free jazz expressions, and Sanders carried over some of that same euphoric upheaval into his own albums. Across multiple classics he recorded for the Impulse label in the late '60s and early '70s, however, Sanders incorporated elements of world music and even more pop-adjacent vocalizations into his sometimes chaotic style, crossing over to audiences who weren't primarily jazz listeners with the poetic mysticism of 1969's Karma or the sociopolitical sentiments of 1971's Black Unity. He remained highly active throughout the '80s and '90s, his sound mellowing somewhat into patient but no less powerful form on albums like 1987's Oh Lord, Let Me Do No Wrong. Though his output slowed in the new millennium, Sanders would continue performing and recording into his eighties, collaborating with electronic producer Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra on 2021's critically acclaimed album Promises.

Pharoah Sanders was born Ferrell Sanders in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1940. Both his mother and father taught music, his mother privately and his father in public schools. His first instrument was the clarinet, but he switched to tenor sax as a high school student, under the influence of his band director, Jimmy Cannon, who also exposed Sanders to jazz for the first time. His early favorites included Harold Land, James Moody, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane. As a teenager, he played blues gigs for 10 and 15 dollars a night around Little Rock, backing such blues greats as Bobby "Blue" Bland and Junior Parker. After high school, Sanders moved to Oakland, California, where he lived with relatives. He attended Oakland Junior College, studying art and music. Known in the San Francisco Bay Area as "Little Rock," he soon began playing bebop, rhythm & blues, and free jazz with many of the region's finest musicians, including fellow saxophonists Dewey Redman and Sonny Simmons, as well as pianist Ed Kelly and drummer Smiley Winters.

In 1961, Sanders moved to New York, where he struggled. Unable to make a living with his music, he took to pawning his horn, working nonmusical jobs, and sometimes sleeping on the subway. During this period, he played with a number of free jazz luminaries, including Sun Ra, Don Cherry, and Billy Higgins. Sanders formed his first group in 1963, with pianist John Hicks (with whom he would continue to play off-and-on into the '90s), bassist Wilbur Ware, and drummer Higgins. When the group played an engagement at New York's Village Gate, a member of the audience was John Coltrane, who apparently liked what he heard. In late 1964, Coltrane asked Sanders to sit in with his band. By the next year, he was playing regularly with the Coltrane group, although he was never made an official member of the band. Coltrane's ensembles with Sanders were some of the most controversial in the history of jazz. Their music, as represented by the group's recordings -- Om, Live at the Village Vanguard Again, and Live in Seattle among them -- represents a near total desertion of traditional jazz concepts, like swing and functional harmony in favor of a teeming, irregularly structured, organic mixture of sound for sound's sake. Strength was a necessity in that band, and as Coltrane soon realized, Sanders had it in abundance.

Sanders made his first record as a leader in 1964 for the ESP label. After Coltrane's death in 1967, Sanders worked briefly with his widow, Alice Coltrane. From the late '60s on, however, he worked primarily as a leader of his own ensembles. From 1966 to 1971, he released several albums on Impulse including Tauhid (1966), Karma (1969), Black Unity (1971), and Thembi (1971). In the mid-'70s he recorded his most commercial effort, Love Will Find a Way (Arista, 1977); it turned out to be a brief detour. From the late '70s until 1987, he recorded for the small independent label Theresa. Starting in 1987, Sanders recorded for the Evidence and Timeless labels. The former bought Theresa Records in 1991 and subsequently re-released Sanders' output for that company.

In 1995, he made his first major-label album in many years, Message from Home (produced by Bill Laswell for Verve). The two followed that one up in 1999 with Save Our Children. In 2000, Sanders released Spirits -- a multi-ethnic live suite with Hamid Drake and Adam Rudolph. In the decades after his first recordings with Coltrane, Sanders developed into a more well-rounded artist, capable of playing convincingly in a variety of contexts, from free to mainstream.

Throughout the 2000s, Sanders played the festival circuit and collaborated on record with various artists including Sleep Walker, Chicago Underground, Joey DeFrancesco, and others. In 2015, he was granted an NEA Jazz Master Award, along with Gary Burton, Wendy Oxenhorn, and Archie Shepp. It is North America's highest award for the genre. In 2020, an archival concert performance was released as Live in Paris (1975). The next year, Sanders worked with Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra on an album of entirely new material called Promises. Released in March 2021, the record was met with almost universal critical praise. It proved to be the last album he would release in his lifetime. Pharoah Sanders died on September 24, 2022, at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 81. ~ Chris Kelsey

Founded in 1904 and therefore the oldest of the city's symphony orchestras, the London Symphony Orchestra became world-renowned for recordings that date back to early gramophone records in 1912. Amid decades of diverse classical programming that followed, including performances for radio and TV, the orchestra also became known for its appearances in numerous film scores, including the Star Wars series. The LSO also tours and first visited North America in 1912 (narrowly avoiding passage on the Titanic).

The ensemble's direct antecedent was the Queen's Hall Orchestra, formed in 1895 for conductor Henry Wood's series of Promenade Concerts. The summer series was so successful that a series of weekly Sunday afternoon concerts was established the same year. The orchestra, however, had never become a permanent group; its members could and often did send other musicians to substitute for them at concerts. In 1904, Wood attempted to end this practice, prompting 46 members to leave and form their own orchestra.

The London Symphony Orchestra was organized as a self-governing corporation administered by a board selected by the players. They arranged for the great Hans Richter to conduct the inaugural concert, and continued to engage a variety of conductors, practically introducing the concept of the guest conductor to the London musical scene. Soon, though, the title and post of principal conductor was established for Richter. The LSO's connection with the BBC goes back to 1924 when Ralph Vaughan Williams conducted the orchestra in the premiere broadcast performance of his Pastoral Symphony. It was the unofficial orchestra in residence for the BBC until the formation of the BBC Symphony in 1930 and continued to broadcast concerts and provide background music for many BBC productions. Other conductors most associated with the orchestra's first few decades include Edward Elgar and Thomas Beecham. During World War II, Wood was welcomed for a series of concerts.

The War took its toll on orchestra membership as it had the general populace, and a concurrent drop in private funding led to increased reliance on the state arts council. This eventually led to structural reorganization in the 1950s, resulting in increased professional standards and the abandonment of profit-sharing; players became salaried employees. The revamped orchestra made only its second tour of the United States in 1963 (the first had been in 1912), and in 1964 embarked on its first world tour. In the mid-1960s the city of London broke ground for the Barbican Arts Centre, intended as the LSO's permanent home. The building was an architectural and acoustic success, and since 1982 has provided the orchestra the solid base it lacked during the first 70-plus years of its existence. The venue opened under principal conductor Claudio Abbado, who took over for André Previn in 1979.

In the meantime, the orchestra made its Star Wars debut, performing John Williams' score for the original 1977 film. While the organization had recorded its first film score in 1935 (H.G. Wells' Things to Come) and appeared in such classics as The Bridge on the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago, and The Sound of Music, Star Wars won three Grammys, an Academy Award, and a BAFTA, among many other accolades, sold over a million copies in the U.S. and over 100,000 in the U.K., and endures as a touchstone in modern film music. The LSO went on to record music for the franchise's entire first two trilogies as well as films like 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1993's Schindler's List, 1997's Titanic, and select installments of the Harry Potter series.

During the tenure of Colin Davis, who was named principal conductor in 1995, the LSO established its own record label, LSO Live. Dvorák's Symphony No. 9, recorded at Barbican Centre in 1999 and released in 2000, bears catalog number 0001. Their 2000 recording of Berlioz's Les Troyens won two Grammys in 2002, and Verdi's Falstaff took home the Best Opera Grammy in 2006. In 2007, Davis took the position of orchestra president, its first since Leonard Bernstein's passing in 1990, and Valery Gergiev became principal conductor.

Also known for crossing over into rock, jazz, and Broadway, among other categories, they followed hit recordings such as Symphonic Rolling Stones and Gershwin Fantasy (with Joshua Bell) with albums like 2017's Someone to Watch Over Me, which had them accompanying archival recordings of Ella Fitzgerald. ~ Marcy Donelson, Joseph Stevenson & Corie Stanton Root