The Album

We’re so happy to share with you our debut album, In the Brink. Over the past couple years, we’ve fallen in love with several works that don’t have a studio recording, and we decided it’s time for them to be out there in the world. The album features:

• In the Brink, by Ledah Finck (feat. percussionist Terry Sweeney)

• Undecim, by Suzanne Farrin

• Esencia, para cuarteto de cuerdas, by Tania León

• Ode on a Broken Loom, by Paul Wiancko

We love these composers’ work, and as a major plus, they’re some of our favorite people. In fact, Ledah is one of the violinists in the quartet, so her piece In the Brink, after which we’re naming the album, is full of very personal Bergamot touches! Check out the links above to learn more about them and keep reading for more info about us, our recording plan, and the music you’ll hear on the album.

We finished recording the album in Fall 2021 at Troy Music Hall in Troy, NY and Reservoir Studios in NYC. The album was recorded by Sam Torres and Matthew Sullivan and mastered by Sam Torres, produced by Paul Wiancko and co-produced by Sam Torres. We’re so happy to have these brilliant people on our team!

In the Brink

We commissioned our very own Ledah Finck to write In the Brink for string quartet + drum kit in 2019 with support from New Music USA. We’re thrilled to be joined by percussionist Terry Sweeney, who premiered the work with us. In Ledah’s words, In the Brink “uses environmental metaphors to address communication between large entities of people, particularly in light of the intolerance and lack of consideration for marginalized populations that permeates the current sociopolitical climate of the United States of America and its government. The “brink” references an observation that I have heard many times since the 2016 presidential election: that we are on the brink of some tipping point in America, that perhaps it will either go up in flames or that the wave of positive activism that has been sparked will inspire further generations for real change. I interpret this brink as a no-man’s-land, a swamp that might dry up or become a lake; a state of being that we are very much in.”

Esencia, para cuarteto de cuerdas

The piece that’s newest to our repertoire, Esencia, is a vivid and exciting 3-movement work by Tania León that we’re getting to know for the first time! As soon as we read through this piece together, we knew we wanted it to be part of our first album. Tania lets us into the sound world of this piece in her words below: 

“Esencia para cuarteto de cuerdas, reflects influences of classical genres of music in the Caribbean and Latino America. The word esencia, in English is the essence or initial point that determines the behavior and the style and an ensemble of needed characteristics for something to become what it is. The more obvious traces of these influences is in the myriad of syncopated gestures indigenous of: son, danzon, guajiras, montunos or echoes of a melodic line in the ‘Aguas de Rosas’ movement. A melody that hearkens the sound of the quena, the traditional flute of the Andes. At times there is a crossover of Coplandesque harmonic overtones, influences of American culture, traces of a syncretic tendency in the musical language that depicts ‘here and now’ while I composed the piece. A sort of commentary where the ‘esencia’ of the piece merges, the same way that my personal musical language has syncretized my cultural experiences.”

Undecim

In 2019, we were lucky enough to meet the wonderful Suzanne Farrin at The Banff Centre and work together on her piece, Undecim. Check out our most recent performance of Undecim below and get a glimpse into the beautiful idea of memory in music through Suzanne’s words: 

“Undecim was written in 2006 during a time when I was thinking about how memory could be applied as a process in my music, especially when considering the long lifespan of stringed instruments. I liked to imagine that these objects remember all of the repertoire from the past and—like an active memory—the bow could temporarily take over the arm of the player and utter articulations of older pieces while left hand stays in the present. It is as if the bow and arm become marionettes that are controlled by remembering. Memories are partial, incomplete and fragmented. They can intrude into “normal” thinking and change, forget and twist around temporality in a constantly changing psychological landscape that effects both the present and its sense of self: re-hearing, forgetting, trying to hold on to something that cannot continue to exist without the aura of its moment of creation.”

Ode on a Broken Loom

We heard the Eybler Quartet’s premiere of Paul’s Ode on a Broken Loom in 2019 and were inspired by the piece’s energy and textures. Paul is a cellist, composer, producer, and all-around awesome person, and we can’t wait to bring this piece to the studio together with Paul as our producer. We couldn’t say it any better than Paul himself, who says, “Get lost in the dense inner machinery of [Ode on a Broken Loom] or let its evolving, canonic tapestry wash over you. Or both.”