Vintage Chic

Barbara Leacock Lea ’51, one of the top interpreters of American song, died on Dec. 26, 2011. She won Wellesley’s Alumnae Achievement Award in 2009.

NPR’s Fresh Air remembers Lea with excerpts from an interview and in-studio concert performance from June 7, 1991.

“Ms. Lea’s singing appears almost artless in its simplicity. Everything she touches is suffused with an aura of calm self-possession colored by a steady, understated sensuality of tone and inflection.”

-Stephen Holden, New York Times