The Colorado College Summer Music Festival was proud to welcome the Poiesis Quartet to Packard Hall on the Colorado College campus on Oct. 9 for its fall Intermezzo Season concert, one of the first stops the ensemble made following being named the winners of the 2025 Banff International String Quartet Competition.

Violinists Sarah Ying Ma and Max Ball, violist Jasper de Boor, and cellist Drew Dansby formed the Poiesis Quartet in the fall of 2022 at Oberlin Conservatory. They currently serve as Graduate Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and the quartet is the former Grand Prize winner of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the 2024 Concert Artists Guild Competition, and the 2023 Saint Paul String Quartet Competition.

In October, the quartet spent a busy day on the CC campus, beginning with a morning presentation, Q&A, and relaxed performance for CC students. They returned to Packard in the evening to captivate a full concert hall, beginning with the first movement of Beethoven's String Quartet, Op. 59, No. 3, followed by Sky Macklay's Many Many Cadences. The program went on with Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's String Quartet No. 1, Calvary, and the Colorado premiere of Brian Raphael Nabors' String Quartet, before closing with the Colorado premiere of a piece commissioned by the Poiesis Quartet: Kevin Lau's String Quartet No. 7 Surfacing. 

Chris O'Shea, a longtime patron and donor to the CC Summer Music Festival, offered high praise following the concert.

"I was ready for top shelf music but the performance way exceeded all expectations," he wrote. "The interaction between the members and the programming both in selection and sequencing could not have been better. ... I couldn’t get enough of that quartet. After that concert the description of a 'Bright Future' for chamber music is a great understatement."

In November, Poiesis was announced as the winner of Chamber Music America's 2026 Cleveland Quartet Award. Chamber Music America also honored the Grammy-winning Imani Winds ensemble, which SMF brought to CC for Intermezzo in 2023, with the 2026 Michael Jaffee Visionary Award.