The Quintet of the Americas is one of the Western Hemisphere’s finest chamber ensembles. The Washington Post has called their performances, “Musical dialogue at the highest level” and Japan’s InTune Magazine has written about them, “Their virtuosity, balances, articulation and intonation mark them as one of the world's top wind quintets. I have never heard finer playing.” The Quintet is in residence in The Department of Music and Performing Arts in The Steinhardt School at New York University.
Long recognized as leading interpreters of folk and contemporary wind quintet music of North and South America, this season the Quintet celebrates the 27th anniversary of its founding. The group’s mission is to broaden the knowledge and appreciation of woodwind chamber music from the Western Hemisphere by performing contemporary, classical and folk-derived music from the diverse cultural traditions of the Americas, and the performance, commissioning, and recording of woodwind quintets and related chamber music. In accomplishing this, they have been:

• Three time recipients of Chamber Music America Residency Program Grants – (1994-95, 1995-96, 1996-97, all in Chicago) sponsored by the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Foundation.
• Two time recipients of ASCAP/CMA Adventuresome Programming Awards – (1992-1993 and 1989-1990). Special programs have included Sephardic Music, Native American music, music influenced by jazz; music by women composers, music from Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, and music from the African Diaspora.

The Quintet has also:

• Toured to over 300 cities in the U.S.A., and in Canada, Venezuela, Colombia, the Caribbean, the Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia.
• Presented residencies at Austin Peay State Univ. (TN); two-year residencies at Northwestern University and Hunter College (NYC); and performed outreach programs for Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concerts, Lincoln Center Inc., Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the 92nd Street Y, Midori and Friends, Fondaçion Batuta in Colombia, Queens Symphony, and Young Audiences of Indianapolis; and been Artists in Residence at New York's Americas Society and presently at New York University.
• Given recitals at Carnegie Hall (commissions of works for Quintet and orchestra), the Carnegie Hall American Music Week Series at Weill Recital Hall; the Bermuda International, Chamber Music Northwest, Inter-American (Puerto Rico), Bar Harbor, and Chautauqua Festivals, Pan American Music Festivals at the Library of Congress and the O.A.S., Washington, D.C.; Festival Internacional de Música Contemporanea in Bogotá, Colombia (1993), the First International Congress on Women in Music; two Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festivals, the International Flute Convention, and a two-day Villa-Lobos centennial festival co-produced by the Quintet and SineNomine Singers, an 80th Birthday concert for Karel Husa, as well as appearances on retrospective concerts of composers David del Tredici at Town Hall, Ursula Mamlok at Merkin Concert Hall, and Ann McMillan at Greenwich House Music School.

The Quintet has commissioned over thirty works funded by Chamber Music America, New York State Council on the Arts, Serge Koussevitzky Foundation of the Library of Congress, Jerome Foundation Commissions, Meet the Composer, Mary Flagler Cary Trust and others. They were one of only two groups nationwide to receive a 2002 NEA/Chamber Music America Commissioning Grant for Judith St. Croix who wrote a piece for the Quintet’s five players using flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn and 32 additional instruments using the Quintet’s native American instrument collection..
The Quintet has recorded three CDs of contemporary American music by Pauline Oliveros, Amy Rubin, Lee Hyla, Christopher Culpo, Elliott Sharp, Roberto Sierra, William Thomas McKinley, Ilan Rechtman, Jacob Druckman, Steven Mackey, Jeffrey Wood, Ursula Mamlok Julia Wolfe, and Stuart Balcomb - Quintet of the Americas Self Portrait (CRI) (CD funded by NEA, NYSCA, and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust.), Discovering the New World (MMC) and Never Sing Before Breakfast, (Newport Classics). Three additional CDs have also been released - XANGO, (music of Villa-Lobos), Souvenirs, (works by Barber, Bernstein, Gershwin, Gottschalk, J.P. Johnson, Joplin, and Ory), and Dancing in Colombia (MSR). A New World CD of the wind chamber music of Karel Husa was released in May 2004.