The Happy Ending Music and Reading Series is a semimonthly performing arts series founded and hosted by Amanda Stern at the Happy Ending Bar in Chinatown, NYC on September 3, 2003. Since its inception, the Happy Ending Music and Reading Series has occurred every other Wednesday, bringing together literary and musical talents to share the stage. On January 7, 2009, the series permanently moves from the Happy Ending Bar to Joe's Pub, where it takes place the first Wednesday of every month. The Happy Ending Music and Reading Series has been chosen by New York Magazine, The Village Voice, and NY Press as the best reading series in NYC, and has been singled out by the New York Times Magazine for helping to "Keep downtown, NY alive." The success of the series is based largely on Amanda Stern's no-nonsense and oftentimes awkward sense of humor. Of the musicians appearing in the series, Stern requires at least one cover song with which the musician must attempt to get the audience to sing along. Of the readers, Stern requires one public risk. Past risks have included karate-chopping wooden boards, freak-dancing with a random member of the audience, spinning a basketball, etc...
Famous quotes containing the words happy, music, reading and/or series:
“O happy fair!
Your eyes are lodestars, and your tongue’s sweet air
More tuneable than lark to shepherd’s ear
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Franceska: I was happy in the life I built up for myself. I put a fine high wall of music around me and nothing could touch me. I was safe and secure. And then you had to come along and knock it all down and I hate you for that.
Maxwell: On the contrary, you love me.”
—Muriel Box (b. 1905)
“After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one’s mind; one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Depression moods lead, almost invariably, to accidents. But, when they occur, our mood changes again, since the accident shows we can draw the world in our wake, and that we still retain some degree of power even when our spirits are low. A series of accidents creates a positively light-hearted state, out of consideration for this strange power.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)