The Russian Jazz Quartet

The Russian Jazz Quartet was a modern jazz band founded in 1964 by saxophonist/clarinetist Boris Midney and bass player Igor Berukshtis, who made a break from their Soviet music hall orchestra on tour to defect to the United States via the American Embassy in Tokyo the same year.

The incident attracted much attention from the Soviet press at the time, they were amongst the first musical artists to defect from the USSR in the 1960s. After requesting political asylum the two were flown to Copenhagen and then transferred to West Germany before moving to New York to pursue their careers in jazz. There they teamed up with American born Roger Kellaway on piano, George Ricci on cello/viola and African-American drummer Grady Tate to record the group's one and only album “Happiness”, released on ABC's recently created jazz label Impulse! in 1965.

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed The Russian Jazz Quartet among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.[1]