Biography
SHORT
Gemma Peacocke is a New Zealand-born, New Jersey-based composer whose music transcends boundaries between chamber, orchestral, art-pop, and electronic forms. Raised in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand, she studied at Victoria University of Wellington and the New Zealand School of Music before moving to the United States.
Peacocke’s music frequently explores themes of identity, haunting, folklore, and feminism, combining contemporary classical elements with electronics and experimental techniques. Her debut album, Waves & Lines (2019, New Amsterdam Records), interweaves landays—Afghan female folk poems—from Eliza Griswold’s I Am the Beggar of the World into a haunting song cycle performed widely across venues such as New York’s Roulette Intermedium and National Sawdust, the Kennedy Center, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and Melbourne Recital Centre.
Peacocke is a vocal advocate for under-heard voices. She co-founded the Kinds of Kings composer collective with Shelley Washington and Maria Kaoutzani in 2017, an ensemble praised by The New Yorker for their bold representation of diverse composers and immersive performances; they premiered their Nine Mothers concerto with the Cincinnati Symphony and eighth blackbird in 2022.
Peacocke lives in an old farmhouse in a tiny town in central New Jersey with her family and a gnarly, gnashy standard poodle named Mila, who remains her most devoted (and opinionated) fan.
LONG
Gemma Peacocke is a New Zealand-born, New Jersey-based composer whose music transcends boundaries between chamber, orchestral, art-pop, and electronic forms. Raised in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand, she studied at Victoria University of Wellington and the New Zealand School of Music before moving to the United States.
Peacocke’s music frequently explores themes of identity, haunting, folklore, and feminism, combining contemporary classical elements with electronics and experimental techniques. Her work is defined by its genre-bending blend of acoustic instruments, voices, and electronics, often addressing sociopolitical themes such as feminism, marginalisation, and folklore. Her debut album, Waves & Lines (2019, New Amsterdam Records), interweaves landays—Afghan female folk poems—from Eliza Griswold’s I Am the Beggar of the World into a haunting song cycle performed widely across venues such as New York’s Roulette Intermedium and National Sawdust, the Kennedy Center, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and Melbourne Recital Centre.
Her portfolio encompasses multimedia cantatas like Pacific (for chamber choir, piano four-hands, and electronics, premiered in Wellington), percussion works such as Death Wish—which appears on Third Coast Percussion’s 2023 album Between Breaths—and orchestral commissions including All on Fire, written for the Rochester Philharmonic in commemoration of Susan B. Anthony and the Nineteenth Amendment centenary. Recent projects include White Horses for the Auckland Philharmonia and Christchurch Symphony, and Manta, a SOUNZ commission for youth and professional orchestras in New Zealand. She recently completed a song cycle about power, love, creation, and death in the lives of Mary Shelley and her stepsister Claire Clairmont.
Peacocke is a vocal advocate for under-heard voices. She co-founded the Kinds of Kings composer collective with Shelley Washington and Maria Kaoutzani in 2017, an ensemble praised by The New Yorker for their bold representation of diverse composers and immersive performances; they premiered their Nine Mothers concerto with the Cincinnati Symphony and eighth blackbird in 2022.
Alongside composing, Peacocke teaches at the New Zealand School of Music and NYU Steinhardt, and writes for I Care If You Listen. Peacocke has a Master’s Degree from NYU Steinhardt and a Ph.D. (jointly in music and humanistic studies) from Princeton University. A voting member of the Recording Academy (GRAMMYs), she lives in an old farmhouse in a tiny town in central New Jersey with her family and a gnarly, gnashy standard poodle named Mila, who remains her most devoted (and opinionated) fan.