Annette Peacock

Annette Peacock (Born 1941) is an American composer, musician, songwriter, producer, arranger. She is a pioneer in electronic music who combined her voice with one of the first Moog synthesizers in the late 1960s.

Annette Peacock was writing music by the time she was four years old. She is self-taught except for her time as a student at The Juilliard School in the early 1970s. She grew up in California.

She moved to New York to marry jazz bassist Gary Peacock in 1960. During the early 1960s, she was an associate and guest of Timothy Leary. Peacock toured Europe with avant-garde jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler while she was married to Gary Peacock, then pianist Paul Bley. Her compositions appeared on his album Ballads and influenced the style of ECM Records. She was a pioneer in synthesizing electronic vocals after having been given an early model of the Moog synthesizer by its inventor, Robert Moog.

She performed with the Bley-Peacock Synthesizer Show at New York's Town Hall in November 1969 and the next month promoted a concert at Philharmonic Hall with late night advertisements and an appearance on The Johnny Carson Show. Her official debut solo album, I'm the One (RCA Victor), was released in 1972.

During the 1970s and '80s, she worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Roger Turner, Allan Holdsworth, Evan Parker, Brian Eno, Bill Bruford and Mick Ronson before moving back to the U.S. The album An Acrobat's Heart (ECM, 2000) took two years to compose and arrange, and broke her twelve-year hiatus from recording.

"Annette Peacock is a stone cold original – an innovator, an outlier, authentically sui generis," said John Doran of The Quietus.

As leader

• 1972 I'm the One (RCA Victor) (reissued in 2010 on ironic US)
• 1978 X-Dreams (Aura Records)
• 1979 The Perfect Release (Aura)
• 1982 Sky Skating (ironic)
• 1983 Been in the Streets Too Long (ironic)
• 1986 I Have No Feelings (ironic)
• 1988 Abstract-Contact (ironic)
• 2000 An Acrobat's Heart (ECM)
• 2005 31:31 (ironic US)
• 2014 I Belong to a World That's Destroying Itself [aka Revenge] (ironic US)

Singles

• "Don't Be Cruel" / "Dear Bela" (Aura, 1978)
• "Love's Out to Lunch" / "Rubber Hunger" (Aura, 1979)
• "Sky-skating" / "Taking It as It Comes" (ironic, 1981)

As co-leader or sidewoman

• 1971 Revenge: The Bigger The Love The Greater The Hate, Bley-Peacock Synthesizer Show
• 1971 The Paul Bley Synthesizer Show, Paul Bley (composer only)
• 1971 Improvisie, with Paul Bley
• 1972 Dual Unity with Paul Bley
• 1978 Feels Good to Me, Bill Bruford
• 1997 Nothing Ever Was, Anyway: The Music of Annette Peacock, Marilyn Crispell
• 2006 Sound Mirrors, Coldcut
• 2015 Nursery Rhymes, Bill Wells

• 1965: Paul Bley Trio - Touching ("Touching", "Both" & "Cartoon")
• 1966: Paul Bley Trio - Closer ("Cartoon")
• 1967: Paul Bley - Ramblin' ("Both", "Albert's Love Theme" & "Touching")
• 1967: Paul Bley, Gary Peacock, Barry Altschul - Virtuosi(all compositions: "Butterflies" & "Gary")
• 1968: Paul Bley - Mr. Joy (all compositions: "Kid Dynamite", "Nothing Ever Was, Anyway", "El Cordobes", "Touching", "Blood" & "Mr. Joy")
• 1968: Paul Bley - Turning Point ("Mr. Joy" & "Kid Dynamite")
• 1968: Karin Krog and Friends - Joy ("Mr. Joy")
• 1970: Paul Bley & Gary Peacock - Paul Bley with Gary Peacock (all compositions: "Gary" &"Albert's Love Theme")
• 1971: Paul Bley - The Paul Bley Synthesizer Show (all compositions:"Mr. Joy", "The Archangel", "Nothing Ever Was, Anyway", "Gary", "Snakes", "Parks" & "Circles")
• 1971: Paul Bley - Ballads (all compositions:"Ending", "Circles" & "So Hard It Hurts")
• 1972: Paul Bley - Open, to Love ("Open, to Love" & "Nothing Ever Was, Anyway")
• 1973: Al Kooper - Naked Songs ("Been and Gone")
• 1973: Paul Bley & Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen - Paul Bley/NHØP ("Gesture Without Plot")
• 1974: Mick Ronson - Slaughter on 10th Avenue ("I'm the One") & (7 Days)
• 1974: Paul Bley & Jaco Pastorius - Jaco ("Blood")
• 1975: Paul Bley – Alone, Again ("Dreams")
• 1978: Bill Bruford - Feels Good to Me ("Back to the Beginning", "Seems Like a Lifetime Ago (Part One)", "Adios A La Pasada (Goodbye to the Past)")
• 1986: Paul Bley - Fragments ("Nothing Ever Was, Anyway")
• 1992: Paul Bley, Franz Koglmann, Gary Peacock - Annette ("Touching" (2 takes), "El Cordobes", "Cartoon", "Albert's Love Theme", "Kid Dynamite", "Miracles", "Blood (2 takes), "Both", "Mister Joy")
• 1996: Marilyn Crispell, Gary Peacock & Paul Motian - "Nothing Ever Was, Anyway: Music of Annette Peacock" (all compositions: "Nothing Ever Was, Anyway", "Butterflies That I Feel Inside Me", "Open, to Love", "Cartoon", "Albert's Love Theme", "Dreams (If Time Weren't)", "Touching", "Both", "You've Left Me", "Miracles", "Ending" & "Blood")
• 2006: Coldcut - "Just For The Kick" ft. Annette Peacock
• 2016: Nels Cline - Lovers medley of ("So Hard It Hurts/Touching") arranged by Michael Leonhart