Lauded as an “ensemble to watch” (Hyde Park Herald), the Poiesis Quartet is the Grand Prize winner of the 50th Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. Having formed just eight months earlier during Oberlin Conservatory’s Advanced String Quartet Seminar, Poiesis also received Fischoff’s Senior Strings Gold Medal and the Lift Every Voice prizes, as well as the Gold Medal and BIPOC Prize at the 2023 St. Paul String Quartet Competition. In May 2024, Poiesis joined the Concert Artists Guild roster for North American management as the winners of the Louis & Susan Meisel Competition. Currently, Poiesis is the Graduate Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) studying under the Ariel Quartet. As graduates of Oberlin College & Conservatory, they have previously been mentored by Sibbi Bernhardsson of the Pacifica Quartet and members of the Verona Quartet.
Since their win at Fischoff, Poiesis has appeared on major concert series in cities including New York, Chicago, Cleveland, San Antonio, Des Moines, Charlotte, and Asheville, and in 2024, they recorded Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s “Calvary” Quartet at Guarneri Hall in Chicago. Poiesis has also performed internationally in Punta del Diablo and Punta del Este, Uruguay in 2023, and Italy in summer 2024 for a residency at the Emilia Romagna Festival. In 2025, their travels take them to residencies in Nova Scotia, CA at the Lunenberg Academy of Music Performance and France for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.
As an ensemble passionate about new music, the October 2024 release of their debut album as we are on the Bright Shiny Things label features world premiere recordings of works by Clint Needham and Richard Stout in collaboration with mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby. For the 2024-25 season, Poiesis serves as the ensemble-in-residence of concertnova, a Cincinnati-based collective which presents multi-sensorial and interdisciplinary concert experiences. Poiesis is passionate about expanding the string quartet repertoire and has presented world premieres of works by Brian Raphael Nabors, Kitty Brazelton, Cara Haxo, and several others.
