United

The Pacific Quintet have gone beyond the standard classical repertoire and have selected pieces that represent their diversity. It's musicians were born and raised all over the globe - Japan, Honduras, South Korea, Germany and Ukraine/Turkey - and here present music from their home countries, transcending all differences of culture, language and tradition. Two pieces, one by the Honduran composer Jorge Santos and the other by the South Korean female composer Soeui Lee were commissioned especially for this album, which also includes Fazil Say's quintet Alevi dedeler raki masasinda and a medley of Japanese folk songs; Hanns Eisler's Divertimento represents Germany, the Pacific Quintet's home base. The album ends with an arrangement of music from West Side Story and pays homage to Leonard Bernstein, the founder of the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo where the players first met. As this project shows, they are truly United in music.