chloé saffores

2026 TAYNTON w/Ed Williams

1. Frescobaldi – Kirie Alio Modo I 15:27
2. Couperin – Prelude non mesuré no. 3 10:14
3. Frescobaldi – Kirie Alio Modo II 13:19


Taking music from Girolamo Frescobaldi’s Fiori Musicali (1635) and Louis Couperin’s “préludes non mesurés” (c.1650), we went to the church organ of St. Lawrence in Taynton, England, in summer 2023 to “decompose” what was written by these composers nearly 400 years earlier.

« We worked with the resistance of the keys as our fingers became engaged in a dance requiring the utmost attention to contact, playing with tact and gravity, taking care of the unintentional arabesques of sound that escaped. » Chloé

« This is the church my father is buried at, and I had lessons with him on that very organ. Fiori Musicali features some of his most cherished music. The renditions of this music Chloé and I improvised involved both extreme sensitivity and endurance as we co-composed with the unexpected, ghostly sounds escaping from slowly pressing the keys and pulling out the stops; like we were playing the organ the way the dead themselves might. » Ed

This album is dedicated to the memory of Ed’s father, the organist and musicologist Peter Williams. The cover photo was taken outside of the church at the end of a Spring day in 2016, some time after Peter’s funeral and near to where he is now buried.

Ed Williams is a composer, performer and researcher working between early music, experimental composition and trans*feminist epistemology.

→ edwilliams.xyz

→ bandcamp