Composer Joseph Byrd, and lyricist and singer Dorothy Moskowitz, first met in New York City in early 1963 when Byrd was working on a recording of Civil War period music for "Time-Life". A devotee of composer Charles Ives, Byrd had already become a respected and innovative composer, involved in experimental music as part of the Fluxus movement with John Cage, Morton Feldman, La Monte Young, David Tudor, Yoko Ono and others. Moskowitz was studying music at Barnard College where she was taught by Otto Luening; she also sang in a vocal group with Art Garfunkel, and worked with David Rubinson on a musical theatre production, as well as on the "Time-Life" project. Byrd and Moskowitz began a relationship – he has referred to their "profound musical and personal relationship", and she has described him as being her "aesthetic guru" – and he helped her obtain a post with Capitol Records; when she left, she was replaced in turn by Rubinson.