Album Notes

Performing a stylistically varied repertoire which spans over 500 years, the MBQ appears in recitals, special events, and free-to-the-public educational and community concerts. In addition to its standard repertoire, the quintet places an emphasis on dynamic programming and on the commissioning and performance of new works, especially those which integrate new or unique styles into the repertoire. Throughout its 10 year history the quintet has commissioned and premiered the works of a wide range of composers, including jazz greats Wynton Marsalis and Paquito D' Rivera.

The quintet has been featured on National Public Radio's "Performance Today," has appeared as featured artists in recital on Japanese network NHK-TV's "The Classical Hour," won or placed in numerous competitions, and educated hundreds of thousands of eager young minds in educational workshops and masterclasses.

The quintet's members are New York area freelance musicians - performing in a wide variety of settings in and around New York. Members of the MBQ regularly perform with the Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, record movie scores and jingles, and perform in the orchestra pits for many Broadway shows.

"The Manhattan Project" represents a cross section of the music we have kept in rotation since our beginning. It reflects the range and diversity of our interests as individuals and as an ensemble while staying within the scope of the composers available in the hometown of the MBQ; that is, Manhattan. This city, we have found, definitely has something for everyone.

In many other places in the United States, one would be hard pressed to find, at best, a handful of pieces by maybe one or two composers. However, we had hundreds of pieces to choose from, some of them works we commissioned as well as hundreds written in the past 70 years.

The music we have chosen highlights many innovations in the craft of composition, thus tracing some of the different types of expression available to composers in this great megalopolis. The singularity of these works is a testament to the tenacity of the New York composer throughout history; assimilating styles of the times yet somehow retaining the inimitable stamp of personality so present in each of these highly original works.

Only in New York!