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The Happy Ending Music & Reading Series is celebrating a happy beginning. The series performance on June 8 at Joe’s Pub marked the launch of Happy Ending’s partnership with Yaddo, an artists’ working community based in Saratoga Springs, New York. Starting next fall, the series will produce three shows featuring entirely Yaddo-affiliated artists. Wednesday night, Suzanne Bocanegra and Kyle deCamp performed a collaborative visual and performance piece, and Amor Towles read from his new novel. Lucius, the musical guest and Happy Ending curator Amanda Stern’s self-proclaimed favorite band, took to the stage for two sets of tunes, gripping the audience with its haunting yet ethereal melodies. The band, fronted by Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, cast a spell over the crowd, traversing scales with a soulful clarity and an underlying pain that colored even the band's more upbeat numbers. As they performed, Wolfe and Laessig faced one another across a set of keyboards, dressed in matching mod apparel from their fl