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Jeanne Lee

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Jeanne Lee was an American jazz singer, poet and composer. She was born in 1939 in New York. Her father was a concert and church singer. At Bard College she studied child psychology, literature and dance, and there she made choreographies for classical and jazz compositions. Her first album, The Newest Sound Around, appeared in 1962.

Music and breakthrough

In the 1960s she explored sound poetry, happenings and art in the spirit of Fluxus. She made music for sound poems by poets such as Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles and was active in the Californian art world. At the end of that decade she returned to jazz. In 1976 she represented African American spirituals in John Cage's Apartment House 1776, written for the American bicentennial. That experience prompted her to write longer works of her own, such as the jazz oratorio Prayer for Our Time.

Influence

Lee mastered a wide range of vocal styles and worked with many innovators, including Gunter Hampel, Andrew Cyrille, Ran Blake, Carla Bley, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Archie Shepp and Mal Waldron. She sang on a large number of Hampel's albums and recorded for labels such as BYG Actuel, ECM and Black Saint. She also taught and wrote a textbook on the history of jazz for primary schools. She died of cancer in 2000. Her importance lies in the way she used the voice as a free instrument, at the intersection of jazz, poetry and dance.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to a recording by Jeanne Lee with Archie Shepp or Mal Waldron and notice how her voice sometimes sings, sometimes almost speaks, and thereby plays along like an instrument.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

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Categories: Artists