Drew Dansby (he/him/his), 23, is the youngest member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and cellist of the award-winning Poiesis Quartet. He will graduate in 2024 with a B.M. in Cello Performance under Darrett Adkins and a B.A. in Chemistry with minors in Sociology and Comparative American Studies from Oberlin College and Conservatory. Originally from Charlotte, Drew is also the cellist and founding member of the Charlotte Piano Trio, which has performed for five years in venues across the Carolinas. Before joining the Cincinnati cello section in January 2024, Drew previously served as principal cellist of the Verbier Festival Orchestra, one-year acting cellist in the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, and associate principal cellist of the New York String Orchestra.

With the Poiesis Quartet, Drew won the Grand Prize, Senior Strings Division Gold Medal, and the Lift Every Voice prize at the 2023 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, as well as the gold medal and BIPOC prize at the 2023 St. Paul String Quartet Competition. Having achieved these successes after forming less than a year earlier at Oberlin, Poiesis has been lauded as an “ensemble to watch” (Hyde Park Herald) with an “extraordinary, honeyed group sound” (Cleveland Classical). Highlights of the 2023-24 season include a recording project with Grammy-winning producer Elaine Martone and mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby, the quartet’s New York City debut on the Schneider Series at the Mannes School of Music, a summer residency at the Emilia Romagna Festival in Italy. The Poiesis Quartet is continuing their studies in the Graduate Quartet Program at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, mentored by the Ariel Quartet. Poiesis is a queer ensemble that strives to embody accessibility in chamber music through interdisciplinary and multi-instrumental performances, educational outreach, and platforming commissions and works by emerging artists.

Drew began playing both violin and cello at the age of 4 and continue to perform both instruments. He was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States for three international summer tours, including as violinist in 2018 and principal cellist in 2019, and was recognized as the first person in the history of the orchestra to be accepted on two instruments. Drew’s first orchestral experience was in the Charlotte Symphony Youth Orchestras, in which he switched each year between violin and cello for ten years. In Charlotte, Drew was a violin student of Ernest Pereira and cello student of Alan Black, both Charlotte Symphony musicians, and was a student and merit scholarship winner at Community School of the Arts for nine years.

Besides his vast orchestral and chamber experience, Drew is also accomplished as a soloist. He is one of four winners of Oberlin’s 2023 Senior Concerto Competition and performs David Baker’s Concerto for Cello and Jazz Band with the Oberlin Jazz Ensemble in April 2024. Drew made his solo debut with the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra at age 15, and a few months later performed with the Eastern Festival Orchestra as a winner of the Eastern Music Festival Concerto Competition. At 16, he appeared on a recital with pianist Keona Lim-Rose on the Davidson College Concert Series. At Oberlin, Drew also performed as a violin soloist on Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 with Jasper de Boor and the Musikos Chamber Orchestra. Drew has been recognized as a National YoungArts Winner and a gold medalist in the annual Cleveland Cello Society competition.

Drew is committed to using music as a tool for community building, especially through long-term educational engagement. In the summer of 2022, he founded and directed the Myers Park Summer Series, a free series of six innovative chamber music concerts fundraising for mutual aid organization Feed the Movement CLT, featuring 18 musicians from western North Carolina including Charlotte-based R&B artist Nia J. Drew is an active cello teacher; for two years he taught for Through the Staff, a national volunteer organization expanding access for young people to private music instruction. During his year in the Charlotte Symphony, Drew was a volunteer coordinator for the symphony’s after-school strings program, Project Harmony. At Oberlin, Drew was a co-founder of Ambrosia, an initiative for students of jazz, classical, and non-Western genres to collaborate and share knowledge. In high school, Drew as Artistic Director of Melodic Minors, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, coordinating volunteer musicians and repertoire for dozens of concerts at nursing homes, hospitals, after-school programs, and fundraisers.

As a chemistry major at Oberlin, Drew conducted molecular dynamics and computational chemistry research under Professors Manish Mehta and Shuming Chen, and he was awarded the Norman C. Craig Chemistry Scholarship and inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honors society as a member of the junior class. Drew has also interned as an air quality analyst at the Charlotte branch of Civil and Environmental Consultants and conducted atmospheric chemistry research with Dr. Terry Miller at The Ohio State University.

In the 2023-24 season, Drew performs on a 1795 Joseph Klotz Mittenwald cello, generously loaned by Oberlin Conservatory, and a 1956 Luigi Lanaro cello made in Mexico City, generously loaned by Jonathan Solars Fine Violins.