Floating Points

Floating Points is the performing and recording name of Sam Shepherd (born 1986 in Manchester), a British composer, record producer, musician and neuroscientist. Shepherd studied neuroscience at University College London and King's College London, completing a doctorate while simultaneously establishing himself as one of the most acclaimed figures in contemporary electronic music, releasing albums including Elaenia (2015), Crush (2019) and Promises (2021, a collaboration with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra).

His score for Aszure Barton's Mere Mortals (2024), commissioned for San Francisco Ballet's inaugural season under Artistic Director Tamara Rojo, was composed for live orchestral performance at every show — an unusually ambitious requirement for a contemporary dance commission. The score fuses Shepherd's characteristic blend of electronic and acoustic sound worlds, drawing on classical orchestral writing, club music and ambient texture. The collaboration brought together Shepherd's scientific and musical preoccupations with the ballet's central themes of artificial intelligence, technology and what it means to be human.