Ensemble Decipher

‘Pretty Saro’ is a folk tune I first heard through a Folkways recording of Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson. I was immediately struck by the simplicity and power of both the performance and the music itself. I then heard Peggy Seeger do it on one of her albums, and it sort of catapulted the song onto my ‘desert island playlist,’ landing right next to another desert island record, ‘Music for Airports.’ I have tapped Eno’s procedure of orbiting tape loops in his wonderful album as a method to cope with the lack of precise synchronization of parts due to the limitations of our the telematic situation and our unstable home internet connections. The material, sourced from the traditional song, is presented with an open scoring, and is performed to a shared (albeit erratic) metronome, which remains silent to the audience. I am pleased by the way this project has allowed me to explore and remodel these two dear sources and make them my own.

—Sam Beebe