by Mike Telin
Winning a competition can serve as a jump-start to a young musician or chamber ensemble. Case in point: the Poiesis Quartet, founded during Oberlin Conservatory’s Advanced Quartet Seminar program in Fall 2022. During their first year as an ensemble, they became the 2023 Grand Prize winner of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. They were also awarded the Gold Medal and BIPOC Prize at the 2023 St. Paul String Quartet Competition.
And when Cleveland Orchestra trombonist and composer Richard Stout was looking for a string quartet to perform his Songs of Correspondence — which he wrote for his Baldwin Wallace faculty colleague Nancy Maultsby — on the opening concert of the Rocky River Chamber Music Society series in October, he sought out the Poiesis. Click here to read an interview with Richard Stout.
On Monday, March 25 at 7:30 pm in Gamble Auditorium, Nancy Maultsby and the Poiesis Quartet — Sarah Ma and Max Ball (violins), Jasper de Boor (viola), and Drew Dansby (cello) — will perform Stout’s song cycle based on letters of Willa Cather. The program will also include Clint Needham’s String Quartet No. 2, “Shades Of Green.” The concert is free.
Life has quickly changed for the Milton String Quartet. After winning the grand prize and string division gold medal at the 44th Annual Fischoff Chamber Music Competition in May of this year, violinists Roman Fraser and Maithéna Girault, violist Evan Robinson, and cellist Joshua Morris are already receiving invitations to perform recitals and at festivals.
Since its founding in 1973, the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition — the largest chamber music competition in the world — has helped launch the careers of many notable chamber music ensembles. Alumni and past winners with ties to Northeast Ohio include the Aeolus Quartet, Cavani Quartet, eighth blackbird, Imani Winds, Jasper Quartet, Jupiter Quartet, Miami String Quartet, Miro Quartet, Pacifica Quartet, and Prima Trio. Most recently, the Omer Quartet, representing the Cleveland Institute of Music, won the senior division string and grand prizes in 2013.