June 2007

Quartet of Happiness
Quartet of Happiness
Quartet of Happiness

By Forrest Dylan Bryant

Combining off-kilter jazz improvisation with comedic performance art, this Boston-based ensemble offers up a rollicking pastiche of musical skits and gamelike exercises. Much of the material probably works better in person: The complex vocal interplay of a scene called “The Man From the Music,” for example, is nearly incomprehensible without visual cues. But the instrumental tracks have a delightfully skewed aesthetic, and the Quartet’s impression of a radio tuning in stations at random is just plain funny.