Poiesis Quartet

Sarah Ma, violin;

Max Ball, violin;

Jasper de Boor, viola;

Drew Dansby, cello

An emerging young "ensemble to watch" (Hyde Park Herald), The Poiesis Quartet is the 2023 Grand Prize winner of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and winner of the 2024 Concert Artists Guild Competition. Founded during Oberlin Conservatory’s Advanced Quartet Seminar program in Fall 2022, within their first year playing together they also received Fischoff’s Senior Strings Gold Medal and the Lift Every Voice prizes, and Gold Medal and BIPOC Prize at the 2023 St. Paul String Quartet Competition.  The Quartet was also lauded as "agile collaborators" with an “extraordinary, honeyed group sound” (Cleveland Classical). The Poiesis Quartet is the current Graduate Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). As graduates of Oberlin College & Conservatory, they were previously mentored by the Verona Quartet and Sibbi Bernhardsson of the Pacifica Quartet.

The name Poiesis is derived from the ancient Greek word ποιεῖν, which means "to make, to fashion, or to shape." As a quartet, Poiesis seeks to program music of all styles and genres with an emphasis on platforming works by emerging and underrepresented composers, creating unique moments of synchronicity and verve.

Now Hear This Season 3, episode 3 “Aaron Copland: Dean of American Music” takes place in Colorado Springs on the CC campus and with the faculty and students of the CC Summer Music Festival.

Drawing from his Jewish roots, modernism and American folk music, Pulitzer-, Grammy- and Oscar-winning composer Aaron Copland created a distinctive American sound in both his classical compositions and film scores. Like Copland did for much of his career, host Scott Yoo and fellow musicians spend time working with students at a music festival in Colorado to strengthen their auditioning skills and better understand Copland’s music. To discover Copland’s inspiration, Yoo travels to New York to explore the Jewish music Copland was raised with as well as modernist music through performances by Cantor Daniel Mutlu, violinist Steven Copes, cellist Mark Kosower, festival music director and pianist Susan Grace and more. Later, Yoo becomes the student and learns from pianist and Copland enthusiast John Novacek about how the composer developed his signature sound, now so familiar to us all.

Go to PBS to stream the entire episode.