Brace by Ian Power

Centered on Power’s 21-minute radically notated string quartet Brace Each Other Dive, Brace is strange, exhilarating chamber music produced by the heightened states of focus required in Power’s groundbreaking text scores, which the quartet interpreted and condensed into graphic scores they made themselves. They lunge into open-string chords, halting glissandi, and vibrato that stretches the limits of taste, performed via a rapid coordination of cueing, pacing, and even indications on when to open and close their eyes. Violinist Ledah Finck writes in the liner notes that the piece “brought Bergamot closer together (with) a blinding patience, which eventually releases the listener, blinking and vulnerable, having been held for a while by something strange and vast.”

Bookending the quartet are reveni ad me, a starkly harmonic droning piece for solo electric organ; and untitled, a viola-cello lockstep duo that is a distant ancestor to the quartet. The album comes with a 13-page booklet designed by Jacob DeGeal that features liner notes by Ledah Finck and Ian Power, score excerpts, and reproductions of the beautiful hand-drawn shorthand scores made by Bergamot Quartet.

Tracklist

1.	reveni ad me
2.	Brace Each Other Dive
3.	untitled (duo for viola & cello)
4.	reveni ad me (excerpt for streaming)	1:15

5.	Brace Each Other Dive (excerpt for streaming)	4:59

6.	untitled (duo for viola & cello) (excerpt for streaming)	1:15

Credits

releases November 6, 2025

reveni ad me (2017)

Ian Power, organ

Brace Each Other Dive (2020)
prologue
i. solos
ii. tutti
iii. tutti
iv. duos
v. mildly tonal, a bit out of nowhere

The Bergamot Quartet
Ledah Finck & Sarah Jane Thomas, violins;
Amy Tan, viola; Irene Han, cello

untitled (2012) | 7:52

Andrew McIntosh, viola; Jennifer Bewerse, cello

Runtime 41:18

reveni recorded by Sam Pluta at the University of Baltimore, May 2024. Mixed by Sam Pluta at Peabody Institute.

Brace recorded and mixed by Andrew Bohman at the University of Baltimore, October 2022.

Untitled recorded and mixed by Murat Çolak at Allegro Studios in Burbank, CA, February 2025.

All tracks mastered by Murat Çolak at GERYON Sound.

Cover photo by Ian Power.

Cover, liner, and Semayd logo design by Jacob DeGeal.

reveni ad me was premiered by Ian Power in Baltimore in 2017.

Brace Each Other Dive was premiered by the Bergamot Quartet in New York City in 2020.

untitled was premiered by Patti Kilroy and Serafim Smigelsky at Harvard University in 2012.

Special thanks for a lot of listening and reading to Jennie Gottschalk, Martin Iddon, Evan Johnson, Sean McFarland, and Haley Olson.

Semayd Records #1.

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