Toronto Summer Music Festival presents Poiesis Quartet: Sarah Ying Ma, violin; Coco Mi, violin; Jasper de Boor, viola; Drew Dansby, cello; Philip Chiu, piano. The programme: Sky Macklay: Many Many Cadences; Maya Irizarry Lambright: forest of taldeni; Kevin Lau: String Quartet No. 7, “Surfacing;” Brahms: Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 at Walter Hall, Edward Johnson Building, 80 Queens Park, Toronto. Wednesday, July 22, 2026.
Last summer, I was fortunate enough to attend the Banff International String Quartet Competition for Ludwig Van, and witnessed the brilliant work of Poiesis, the group that deservedly won first prize after playing material ranging from Haydn to contemporary works.
As festival director Barry Shiffman noted, “Poiesis Quartet impressed the jury and inspired the audience.”
Since that time, they have garnered the prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award in the US. An openly queer group, Poiesis combine great musicianship with an impressively progressive artistic and sociological agenda. They are commissioning work by young diverse composers, and touring North America with a stylish program of new pieces as well as archival gems by composers like Brahms and Beethoven.
In the fall, Poiesis will be in residence at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Since their victory at Banff last fall, the quartet has seen the departure of second violinist Max Ball, who has been replaced by Coco Mi. Ludwig Van’s Marc Glassman interviewed Coco Mi, violist Jasper de Boor and cellist Drew Dansby via Zoom in advance of their first Toronto concert, part of the Toronto Summer Music lineup.
The interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Poiesis Quartet at the Banff 2025 Final Round, performing Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate: Pisachi (Reveal)
Welcoming Coco Mi to the Quartet
LV: First off, for those of you who’ve been in the group before, what was it like bringing in Coco (Li) and saying goodbye to Max (Ball)?
Jasper: It really sad to see Max go but it’s such a delight to play with Coco. It’s been a really fun time getting to know Coco’s playing better.
LV: Drew?
Drew: It’s going to be really exciting to see how Coco’s presence in the group affects our whole identity and how we play together.
LV: Coco, what does it feel like to join this group?
Coco: Honestly, I feel very lucky and grateful. It also feels very serendipitous in a way, knowing Jasper for so many years and playing chamber music with them. Also, Sarah and I had the same pre-college teacher, so we have lineage that way. I’ve followed the quartet’s journey from the start, and it feels really surreal to be part of them as they go full force, full momentum.
A Love Letter to the Queer Community
LV: I was at BISQC and you mentioned the Love Letters Commissions. Can you talk about it? I know one of the pieces in your Toronto program is from those commissions.
Jasper: It’s been an amazing experience working with all five of the Oberlin composers. We gave them total freedom in what they would compose, and it’s been exciting getting to see the similarities and the overlap between what they ended up with in their individual pieces.
Drew: Maya (Irizarry Lambright)’s piece, which is on the program for Toronto, really builds a world. It uses so many different compositional techniques. There’s a lot of graphic notation mixed with traditional notation in the score, and so many different genre influences. Maya really encourages each of us as the performers to explore what we can do with our instruments. We have to actively listen to each other and create something cohesive as a whole, in the moment. That’s the really cool thing about the piece.
LV: What was it like for you two — Drew and Jasper — studying at Oberlin?
Drew: Going to Oberlin was really intellectually stimulating time. You get to meet people with so many different interests that all combine in their work. That’s definitely true of all of the composers that we commissioned. Only one of them was an actual composition major. One of them has a background in musical theatre. One of them has a background in jazz and jazz composition.
LV: Can you talk a bit more about the young composers that you’re espousing?
Drew: The composers are queer and trans people of colour, and that’s why we named the program A Love Letter to the Queer Community. The whole project is grounded in our feelings of reciprocity to the communities: the queer community, the Oberlin community. These communities that we’ve come from have always been there for us.
Now that we have these pieces, we’re able to perform them so much. We’re able to take them around the world and provide opportunities for these composers. Some of them are still in college, some of them are just out of college. It’s really important to them. With the visibility that we have, we really wanted to use that to collaborate with people who are friends, and who we share this background.
Coco: In classical music, I feel like we don’t often see initiatives really lifting up queer composers, and even queer musicians, into the big stages. We’re trying to normalize talking about it and diversifying, expanding the range of what can be seen in a string quartet.
Poiesis Quartet perform Sky Macklay: Many, Many Cadences (November 2025):
Being a Queer Quartet in Trump’s America
LV: The history of classical music has been shrouded by closeted composers and musicians. How does it feel to be able to be in a position where you can be proud about who you are?
Jasper: We’re unbelievably fortunate to able to do this. It’s because of all these communities that support for us that we’re able to be who we are. We want to do the same for the composers and as many others as possible in the future.
LV: How is it being who you are in Trump’s America?
Drew: There’s that ideology which is always there. It’s underlying everything in ways that we can’t even see all the time. So, we’re very aware of it. But honestly, the people that we’ve been fortunate to work with and who have presented us have been very accepting and welcoming. One of my favourite things is that you see a different side of certain audience members who suddenly feel they’re in a different space and more able to express their feelings about the music that we’re playing.
Cincinnati College of Music and the Ariel Quartet
LV: Tell me about Cincinnati. What’s it like to be a quartet in residence?
Drew: We were there for two and a half years. It was a great place for us to be with the mentorship of the Ariel Quartet. They really helped us see a lot of different perspectives that we didn’t have before coming to Cincinnati. They worked with us on what it means to make a unified quartet sound while also keeping our individualities. Cincinnati itself is amazing. For such a small city, there is so much going on, even specifically in terms of chamber music.
Jasper: Mainly we spent our time being mentored as a group by the Ariel Quartet on top of individual lessons with our instruments. We also had the opportunity to do electives on other things, like ecology which is super cool.
LV: Can you talk about the Ariel Quartet’s effect on you in a more granular way?
Drew: The Ariels encouraged us to think about music in a philosophical way, an exploratory way. They’d ask about the music, ‘What’s the story being told here?’
They really made us think about the music — the best way to solve problems and to accomplish what you want to say. The four of them have very different focuses and approaches. One might focus more on harmony and intervals, very technical things. And then another would be much more ‘big picture’ about the character of different sections and how they relate to each other. We learned that we need to keep things fresh and always have different perspectives.
Focus on Coco
LV: Coco, you’ve won awards at Juilliard. Have you worked very much with quartets before joining Poiesis?
Coco: Not to this extent. I’ve done a lot of summer festivals where you’re put with a group of people for seven weeks in the middle of nowhere and you learn how to perform together by week three. You are forced to hone the best version of your art and your voice in a very condensed amount of time.
When I flew over to Cincinnati a few weeks ago to have our first rehearsals as a group, I told them that it kind of feels like our own chamber festival. We are on a short timeline, and we have a lot of repertoire to learn. It’s been really awesome to observe what systems are working for this group and to try to see how I can fit in and also uplift and enhance certain conversations to make the music a product of all four of us.
LV: You have a particular role in the quartet being second violin. What do you think of being that player in the group?
Coco: I’ve always loved being second violin, both musically and in a social way. I really like steering energy. I enjoy the supportive and observant role in life.
LV: As a second violinist, you are a team player.
Coco: Yeah, I love it. I like being the glue, the hype person in the group.
LV: Do you feel philosophically in tune with what Poesis has been up to now and what they’ll likely do, going forward?
Coco: Absolutely, yes. I’m very passionate about making classical music accessible, fresh and relevant. I feel that the type of pieces that we’re commissioning and performing and dialogue between the old and the new, are all things that I’ve been exploring in my own solo career. I feel like I’m very much a musical extrovert. So, I really enjoy developing myself in the context of working with other amazing artists. It feels like the perfect context, to further this part of my life with Poiesis.
Poiesis Quartet perform Kevin Lau’s String Quartet No. 7:
The Repertoire and Future Commissions
LV: Where are things at now in terms of what we can expect to hear you play, not just this summer, but over the course of the next few years?
Jasper: We have two more exciting commissions upcoming. One with Jeff Scott, which will be premiering the summer, and then Ivan Rodriguez, which is due for early fall.
Coco: We’re playing Beethoven’s Opus 135, his last quartet. Fun fact, Jasper and I have actually played two other late Beethoven string quartets together at summer festivals. So, it feels like we’re at a festival again
LV: Opus 135 can be scarily awesome in its way. But I must admit to being interested in commissioning new work. How does it work with you? Do you talk with a composer that you like and say, ‘propose something,’ or do you get more involved?
Jasper: Unless the person we’re working with asks us for some sort of inspiration, we generally let them do their thing. But I think if needed, we can absolutely provide some ideas.
Drew: There’s so many different ways that we come into contact with composers. Take Kevin Lau. We were at a quartet competition in St. Paul Minnesota, and he wrote the required piece for it. We loved it so much that we knew that that Kevin was going to be the first composer we commissioned if we ever got the chance. We know Jeff Scott because he was a professor at Oberlin when we were there and always loved his work. And Ivan we knew because we played one of his pieces in orchestra, and it was amazing.
Kevin’s commission was purely our own project, but sometimes an organization which is producing a series might approach us and say, ‘We can give you a commission’ as well as wanting us to play. And maybe they’ll have a composer in mind. There are so many connections that are improbable, they just happen, because of the nature of the music world being so small.
We want to keep commissioning. It’s a huge part of what we want to do.
The Cleveland Quartet Award and Carnegie Hall
LV: How will winning the Cleveland Quartet Award help your progress in chamber music?
Jasper: A big part of the award is there’s eight presenters will provide concerts for us over the next couple of seasons. As an honour, it’s an extremely meaningful award.
Drew: The Cleveland Quartet, of course, is one of the most legendary ensembles. They created the award by their last season of touring. All of their profits went towards establishing this award and the series that partners with it. One of those venues is in Carnegie Hall, where we’ll have our debut in fall of 2028. That’s a huge opportunity for us. It’s an opportunity to program something that we believe in, and we want people to know about us. It will be our personal statement in a concert.
- Find tickets and concert details for the Poiesis Quartet’s performance at Toronto Summer Music on July 22, 2026 [HERE].
Marc Glassman for Ludwig Van
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