Formed in 2023, the Koa String Quartet is made up of violinists Kisa Uradomo (Maui, Hawai’i) and Leah Pernick (Metro Detroit, Michigan), violist Devin Cowan (Stony Brook, New York), and cellist Heewon Lee (O'ahu, Hawai’i). Koa is the Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Colorado Boulder where they study with the Takács String Quartet and were the first prize winners of the 2024 Ekstrand Competition. Koa is invested in presenting high quality classical music, fostering musical engagement with communities, and performing music by living composers. In addition to performing classical string quartet repertoire, Koa also performs Hawaiian music written by Queen Lili’uokalani, fiddle tunes, film scores, and pop covers. As part of their residency at CU Boulder, Koa performs compositions written by composition students each semester. 

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In fall of 2025, Koa held a weeklong residency in Minneapolis through the MacPhail Center for Music. During this residency, they led interactive presentations for students at 5 different high schools, presented 4 children’s concerts, performed 2 concerts for assisted living communities, attended a side-by-side rehearsal with an amateur adult orchestra, and performed a full recital. 

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In the summer of 2025, Koa studied with the Dalí Quartet during the Off the Hook Music Spoke Festival; while at Off the Hook, they presented educational concerts for children, performed several community concerts, and collaborated with the Dalí Quartet on Niels Gade’s Octet and Mozart’s G Minor Quintet. They were also the Emerging Quartet-in-Residence at the Madeline Island Chamber Music Festival where they worked with the Arianna Quartet, Calidore Quartet and Brooklyn Rider, and collaborated with Wendy Chen and Christopher Constanza on the Faure Piano Quintet and Enescu Octet. While at Madeline Island, they also served as mentors for high school chamber groups and presented public concerts for the community. 

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During their time as a quartet, they have prioritized their education goals through their work with El Sistema Denver coaching chamber groups, their involvement with public school orchestra programs in Boulder, their weeklong residency at the MacPhail Center for Music, their weeklong residency at Bravo! Vail in 2024, and their work as the Quartet-in-Residence at the Hana Hou Music Program in 2024 and 2025, an educational nonprofit in Maui founded by first violinist Kisa Uradomo. This past year at Hana Hou, Koa visited 9 schools, taught 18 different sessions, and performed at 7 community concerts.

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The name “Koa” comes from the tree in the Hawaiian Islands, and the wood symbolizes strength and courage.