Promises: Through Congress
COSMOS 2021
‘Promises: Through Congress’ explores visual artist Julie Mehretu’s painting Congress (2003) and the 2021 album by electronic composer and musician Floating Points, jazz titan Pharoah Sanders, and featuring the London Symphony Orchestra, ‘Promises’ (Luaka Bop). The film was made by Trevor Tweeten in the winter of 2021 on location at The Broad during the presentation of an upcoming exhibition that featured a.o. Congress.
While composing ‘Promises’, Floating Points said he would refer to and get lost within Mehretu’s painting. Once the album – which is a continuous piece of music in nine movements for saxophone, strings, keyboards and electronics – was completed, he understood how influential Mehretu’s paintings had become to him, particularly in his composition of the string section in the center of the piece. The idea for the trapezium seen on the album cover is sampled from a motif from the centre of the Congress painting itself, and a nod to Ornette Coleman’s album ‘Free Jazz’.
Directed by Trevor Tweeten