The Modern Mandolin Quartet was formed in 1985 to give a new voice to that most American of musical instruments, the mandolin. Following the tradition of the mandolin orchestras and chamber groups from the early twentieth century, the MMQ uses the instruments of the mandolin family which correspond to the conventional string quartet (two mandolins, mandola, and mandocello).

The Quartet's goals are to introduce audiences to the modern mandolin family of instruments, to increase the repertoire of original and arranged music for the instrument, and to bring the mandolin into the next millennium by commissioning new works.

Their early recordings, Modern Mandolin Quartet and Intermezzo, were explorations of the world of classical music using mostly transcriptions; Nutcracker Suite featured the first piece composed for the group, the first guest artists and the first complete transcription of a major work. Their 1994 recording, Pan American Journeys, explored music of the Americas; their 1999 recording, Modern Mandolin Quartet - Interplay, features pieces specially commissioned from David Balakrishnan (of Turtle Island String Quartet fame) and Utah composer Tully Cathey, as well as a string quartet by Terry Riley. The group's most recently released recording, "Americana", took the classical world by storm, being the only classical recording to receive 3 Grammy Nominations in 2013.

The Modern Mandolin Quartet members are Dana Rath and Matt Flinner (mandolins), Radim Zenkl (mandola), and Adam Roszkiewicz (mandocello). The members of the Quartet come from diverse backgrounds including classical, jazz, rock, and folk.

To date the Quartet has arranged and performed over 90 works originally written for orchestra, chamber ensemble, piano, guitar, and string quartet, including arrangements of traditional classical music (Vivaldi, Bach, Corelli, Mozart, Ravel, Bernstein), string quartets (Mozart, Bartok, Dvorak, Villa-Lobos, Terry Riley), music from the mandolin's historical roots, (American Bluegrass, Brazilian Choro, Italian folk songs), and commissioned works (David Jaffe, Tully Cathey, David Balakrishnan, Philip Bimstein, Larry Polansky, and Edgar Meyer).

The Modern Mandolin Quartet began recording in 1988 with Windham Hill/BMG; with whom they released four albums, with sales in excess of 130,000 units worldwide. In addition to their own albums, the group appears on samplers from Polygram Records, Well Tempered Productions, and Acoustic Disk. In 1994 the Quartet received a National Endowment for the Arts Chamber Music grant to tour and perform new American music.

They are the 1995 recipients of a grant from the Meet the Composer/Lila Wallace - Reader's Digest Fund Commissioning Program, which funded David Balakrishnan's Interplay and Tully Cathey's Elements. These works premiered in 1997 at Merkin Hall in New York City; both are featured on Interplay.