The Modern Rock Quartet (MRQ) was a Canadian jazz-rock band put together by former Luke & The Apostles keyboard player Peter Jermyn with several musicians who had played with Bruce Cockburn in the final lineup of The Esquires.
Formed in August 1968, Modern Rock Quartet and quickly attracted record company interest with their unique sound (a guitarless band was something of an oddity at the time).
Though based in Ottawa, The MRQ returned to Toronto on numerous occasions throughout 1969 and 1970, playing at the Varsity Stadium (outdoors) on June 22, 1969, with Steppenwolf, Chuck Berry, Blood Sweat & Tears, Johnny Winter, Sly & The Family Stone, Procol Harum, Tiny Tim, Alice Cooper, Al Kooper, The Band, Velvet Underground, Rotary Connection, and others, performing at the Toronto Rock Festival (at Varsity Arena, (indoors) on March 25, 1970, with Canned Heat, The Faces with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood MC5, Parliaments & The Funkadelic, and others, and appearing at the Festival Express show at the CNE Stadium on June 27–28, 1970 with The Band, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead Mountain, Traffic, Ten Years After, Buddy Guy, Robert Charlebois and others.
He spent several years doing lecture tours demonstrating the instrument and did the theme tune for NBC TV's children's science programme, “Dr Wizard” using the Sackbut.
The remaining trio of Lewicki, Orr and Coulthart spent a few years playing in a bar called Chez Henri in Hull on the Quebec side of the river, outside Ottawa before breaking up.