The avant-garde jazz singer Jeanne Lee first studied dance at Bard College but then switched to jazz singing when she recorded her 1962 debut album, THE NEWEST SOUND AROUND, a collection of downbeat standards with the "third stream" pianist Ran Blake, whom she met at Bard. Lee plunged headlong into the free-jazz movement, eventually collaborating with future husband/vibraphonist Gunter Hampel on the seminal Euro-jazz LP, THE 8TH OF JULY 1969, as well as particupating on key recordings by Carla Bley, Marion Brown, Anthony Braxton, the Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava, and John Cage. Lee eventually returned to her partnership with Blake, co-teaching with him at the New England Conservatory Of Music and recording another set of jazz standards in 1991 called YOU STEPPED OUT OF A CLOUD.