Gemma Peacocke

Composer Gemma Peacocke grew up in Hamilton, New Zealand, and she moved to the United States in 2014. She writes a broad range of music including art-pop songs, EDM-inspired tracks and orchestral music. She has a particular love of interdisciplinary work and often collaborates with artists, writers, and theatre designers.

Gemma’s first album, Waves & Lines, sets poems by Afghan women from a book by Eliza Griswold called I Am the Beggar of the World. Waves & Lines was released on New Amsterdam in March 2019 and has been performed as an evening-length multimedia song cycle at Roulette Intermedium and National Sawdust in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and Australia’s Melbourne Recital Centre.

Gemma’s music has been performed and commissioned by Third Coast Percussion, PUBLIQuartet, Rubiks Collective, ~Nois saxophone quartet, the Furies, cellist Nick Photinos, and Alarm Will Sound. In January 2020, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra premiered All on Fire, a piece commissioned by the orchestra in honour of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Susan B Anthony and the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Gemma is a founding member of the Kinds of Kings composer collective. Described by The New Yorker as “distinguished young creators who work in diverse styles,” the collective focuses on amplifying and advocating for underheard voices and producing immersive and wondrous concerts. The collective is an Artist-in-Residence with National Sawdust for the 2019-2020 season.

So far Gemma has lived in six different countries and she currently lives in BedStuy, Brooklyn, with her husband George and highly-strung rescue poodle Mila. She is a Ph.D. candidate in both Music and Humanistic Studies at Princeton University.