Quartet of Happiness Visits CMWOn the evening of Tuesday May 31st, The Quartet of Happiness joined Community MusicWorks students and staff for the final Workshop of the school year. It’s difficult to label exactly the type of workshop these four gentlemen from Boston gave – a workshop that defies description. Everything began simply enough, with an introduction to their instruments (a jazz combo of drum set, double bass, tenor and alto saxophone). The opening number started off as a pleasant lullaby duet between the tenor sax and bass. Soon, however, the alto and drummer seemed to become anxious. They suddenly interjected a brief but raucous line of music, interrupting the lullaby. From then on the lullaby devolved into a furious duel between the two duets, culminating with the two contrasting moods of music combined as one! From that point on we knew this was no ordinary workshop. The Quartet of Happiness continued for the next hour with a series of performances and performing activities which engaged and involved the audience. They played music, including a piece designed to create the sounds of randomly scanning through channels on the radio. They took volunteers for on-stage competitions, with the audience as the judge. They made us break out into hysterical laughter and in quite the climax made everyone scream with terror as one of them morphed into a monster and proceeded out into the audience!
The Quartet of Happiness certainly captured the attention and enthusiasm of us all. I happily watched as my students laughed together, sang along, and even shrieked with glee during the high points of the performance. We are all so grateful to The Quartet of Happiness for giving us such a fun and imaginative concluding workshop of the school year! —Lisa Barksdale, Resident Musician
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