An Acrobat's Heart

An Acrobat's Heart

ASIN: B00004WMY3

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Annette Peacock may still be best known for the pieces she composed for Paul Bley in the 1960s and early '70s. They were spare, elusive ballads that lent themselves perfectly to multiple harmonizations and free improvisation. Since then, she's had an episodic career, at one point recording with Bill Bruford. But she's frequently been out of the spotlight. She sings and plays piano on 15 of her songs here, accompanied by the Cikada String Quartet of Norway. Acrobat's Heart may be an ideal description of what Peacock does, from writing phrases like "the din of an opening heart" to playing with harmonic gravity on "Weightless." Her songs are always close to the core of an emotion--whether loss, rapture, betrayal, or hope--that's recaptured and concentrated in reverie until it clarifies or blooms into something else. Within these subdued songs, she is able to construct sometimes startling combinations and leaps--emotional, melodic, or verbal, or all three at once. Her voice is almost without vibrato, a pared-down instrument that etches her striking melodies with telling accuracy. Her string writing here, too, is an effective complement to the songs, the instruments seeming to breathe as one with her voice and piano. --Stuart Broomer

Tracks:

Mia's Proof
Tho
Weightless
Over.
As Long As Now
U Slide
B 4 U Said
The Heart Keeps
Ways It Isn't
Unspoken
Safe
Free The Memory
,Ever 2 B Gotten.
Camille
Lost At Last

Amazon.com

Annette Peacock may still be best known for the pieces she composed for Paul Bley in the 1960s and early '70s. They were spare, elusive ballads that lent themselves perfectly to multiple harmonizations and free improvisation. Since then, she's had an episodic career, at one point recording with Bill Bruford. But she's frequently been out of the spotlight. She sings and plays piano on 15 of her songs here, accompanied by the Cikada String Quartet of Norway. Acrobat's Heart may be an ideal description of what Peacock does, from writing phrases like "the din of an opening heart" to playing with harmonic gravity on "Weightless." Her songs are always close to the core of an emotion--whether loss, rapture, betrayal, or hope--that's recaptured and concentrated in reverie until it clarifies or blooms into something else. Within these subdued songs, she is able to construct sometimes startling combinations and leaps--emotional, melodic, or verbal, or all three at once. Her voice is almost without vibrato, a pared-down instrument that etches her striking melodies with telling accuracy. Her string writing here, too, is an effective complement to the songs, the instruments seeming to breathe as one with her voice and piano. --Stuart Broomer

Customer Reviews:

A beautiful suite of songs.......2004-12-15

Much of Annette Peacock's back catalogue has scandalously never been given the CD treatment, including her ahead-of-it's-time masterpiece I'm The One from 1970, with its sublime version of Love Me Tender and synthesized vocals and electronics that ought to have been impossible at the time, so if you peer into the Annette Peacock section of your closest large emporium, this 2002 set on ECM is what you are most likely to unearth.
Annette Peacock, born in New York on 8 January 1942, was in her twenties when discovered by Timothy Leary, experimenting with psychedelia and avant garde jazz. She later eloped with Gary Peacock, bassist for Albert Ayler and later Paul Bley, and thus composed for the Paul Bley Trio, writing their entire 1967 album Ballads, before touring as the Annette and Paul Bley Synthesizer Show at the start of the 1970s.
She has also expanded on her rockier inclinations, making ground-breaking work for the Aura label which inspired the likes of patti Smith, and worked and recorded with Bill Bruford (and appeared with him on the Old Grey Whistle Test in the UK in 1978). She has also collaborated with the modern classical composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Her mother was a classical musician, and in her sixtieth year Annette chose to record this acoustic and electronics-free album of reflective bitter-sweet songs on which her distinctive singing and piano playing is sympathetically accompanied by the Cikada String Quartet, calling up memories of the chamber music she was brought up listening to. The result is a haunting, evocative, mature and beautiful suite of songs where lines of thought and music stop and are replaced with new themes and musical ideas that pick up the threads and form a complete whole. A wholly satisfying listen

She knows how to cast a spell or two.......2003-02-05

One reason I find much of the ECM catalog so alluring, is the atmosphere, that brooding headiness projected by so many of that label's artists. This one could win an award for its mood-inducing qualities. Singer-songwriter Annette Peacock's discography has been quite varied. Here, she gives us a ruminative, laidback and somewhat pensive mood, which doesn't let up for the entire 61 minutes. Her accompanying piano and the spare contribution by the string quartet yield a chamber-music feel, but her jazz-inflected vocals almost croon by comparison. It's a fairly arresting mix, actually. The songs are introspective, often pondering the hurt love can sometimes bring. But, while listening to this, I pay more attention to how she shapes the words, how they sound, rather than what she is singing about. Her lyrics are not terribly deep, but who cares, when the sound of the words is so soothing, her phrasing so gently contemplative. Her singing haunts me; her voice drips with melancholy. I also love that uncanny ability of hers to sing and talk concurrently.

Annette hides her age very well: you would never guess by her cover photo that this gal is in her early 60s. Nor does she sound like it. She is a brilliant composer, as interesting an artist as you will find. Oh, that ECM would record her more! I treasure AN ACROBAT'S HEART. If you're an ECM fan, or if you enjoy the type of brooding magic I've described, you too will treasure this recording.

Cheers,
Murray

New Ears.......2001-12-31

I am a musician. I play alot and when not playing music I listen to the music of others. This CD forced me to re-think my concept of music. It forced me to grow. We tend to think of music as circular..going out and back to home...like a boomerang. Peacock's music goes out and out further and then off in another direction. It flies on its own. It is linear and tangential. It may never come home. Don't think about pitch; it's too confining. Think of Picasso. It is quite an accomplishment when an artist can cause us to re-think art with beauty, grace and the depth of emotion Peacock shares here. This is a landmark CD that unfortunately will be heard by too few.

The Rise and Fall of a Peacock's Heart.......2001-05-20

Having heard the last half of an interview with selections from her Acrobat's Heart on WNYC, a notably classical station, I was moved to hear more of Annette Peacock. Her atonal venue seems to try to mask her poetic words. As I listened, I felt as though I were the acrobat feeling the highs and lows of the circus swing. That she not only composed the music, but also the poetry, is more than commendable. Nyro and Schoenberg must smile when they hear her work!

Droning, minimalist, cerebral, jazzy introspective vocals.......2001-03-13

In which a fairly talented female vocalist tells the world just what she thinks about putting her career on hold to raise the kids she had by her ex-husband, even though she still kind of has a crush on him or someone very much like him. The New York Times loved this album, and there are a few good cuts (for example, "Safe" and "Tho"). I plan to leave this CD in the office, next to Barber "Adagio for Strings" and Kronos Quartet "Four by Philip Glass" and a few others, for those nights when I need to stay calm and focused and get a lot of work done.

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