The Eric Mintel Quarter at Bucks County Playhouse
By: BWW News Desk Jan. 23, 2017
Featuring Bucks County's own, pianist and composer Eric Mintel, EMQ will perform many of Mintel's original songs, music by Jazz legend Dave Brubeck, Blue Rondo a la Turk, their own version of Paul Desmond's Take Five and adding jazz renditions of such classic TV show themes as "I Dream of Jeannie," "Mission Impossible," "The Munsters," "All in the Family" and many others. It is a night of music planned for the entire family.
Joining Mintel will be Nelson Hill on sax/flute, Dave Mohn on drums and Jack Hegyi on bass. The EMQ has been performing and touring together for the last 15 years. The EMQ will be busier than ever in 2017 with four separate tours and performances at many colleges and universities as well as prestigious jazz venues including South in Philadelphia, Shanghai Jazz in Madison, NJ and the Jazz Corner in Hilton Head, SC.
Mintel leads the group that has performed twice by invitation at the White House for President Bill Clinton (1998) and President Barack Obama (2011), who praised Mintel for his artistry. The EMQ also has opened for Dave Brubeck at the Kimmel Center, has performed several times at the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center in DC and recently had a special concert at the United Nations. Mintel was a featured guest on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on NPR and the Quartet's music is frequently heard on Sirius XM radio.
The members of the Eric Mintel Quartet are educators and often conduct clinics and workshops at colleges, universities and middle and high schools that focus on various aspects of jazz, including how to listen to the music, understanding the instruments in a jazz combo, improvisation and the business of jazz.
For more information, visit www.ericmintelquartet.com.
ABOUT BUCKS COUNTY PLAYHOUSE
Bucks County Playhouse, a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, is the oldest and largest professional Equity performing arts center in Bucks County. Under the direction of Tony Award-winning producers, Alexander Fraser and Robyn Goodman, The Playhouse provides first class professional theatrical entertainment as well as community events, partnerships and arts education programming for visitors and residents of New Hope, Doylestown, Lambertville and the Delaware Valley. In 2017, Bucks County Playhouse is pleased to enter into a new partnership with Philadelphia's Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, launching in a summer collaboration of the successful Bucks County Playhouse production of "Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story."
Located between Philadelphia and New York, Bucks County Playhouse opened in 1939 in a converted 1790 gristmill after a group of community activists, led by Broadway orchestrator Don Walker and playwright Moss Hart, rallied to save the building. The Playhouse quickly became one of the country's most famous regional theaters, featuring a roster of American theatrical royalty including Helen Hayes, Kitty Carlisle, George S. Kaufman, Grace Kelly, Robert Redford, Bert Lahr, Walter Matthau, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters, Alan Alda, Tyne Daly, Liza Minnelli and Audra McDonald and remained in continuous operation until December 2010. In 2012, The Playhouse re-opened thanks to the efforts of the Bridge Street Foundation, the nonprofit family foundation of Kevin and Sherri Daugherty, and Broadway producer Jed Bernstein.
Since its renovation, significant productions include Terrence McNally's "Mothers and Sons" starring Tyne Daly, which moved to Broadway and was nominated for two Tony Awards, and "Misery" by William Goldman based on the Stephen King novel which also went on to a Broadway run in the 2015-16 season. Two of The Playhouse's recent productions -- "Company" starring Justin Guarini, and William Finn's "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" -- were named by Wall Street Journal to its "Best of Theatre" list for 2015. The Playhouse's productions of "Steel Magnolias" and "Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story" broke box office records in 2016.
Videos
