Peacocke’s ‘Manta’ Makes Its U.S. Debut in PSO Opener

It started with noodling around on a violin.

New Zealand-born composer Gemma Peacocke didn’t know as a kid that spending hours creating new musical pieces could one day be a career. Now years later, her orchestra piece “Manta” will be debuted at the Princeton Symphony Orchestra’s season-opening concert.

The orchestra performs Peacocke’s “Manta,” along with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35, and Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, on Saturday and Sunday, September 14 and 15, in Richardson Auditorium on the campus of Princeton University.

Peacocke had a bit of an unexpected journey getting here, starting as an industrial design major at Victoria University of Wellington. However, the love of music soon called her back, and she graduated with a music and English literature degree.

“[I] had a lot of different jobs for a long time before I realized if I want to be a composer, I really have to figure out a way to commit to it without having day jobs,” Peacocke said.

Impassioned to start a long-awaited career, Peacocke applied to master’s programs in the U.S. and got into New York University, where she studied under Julia Wolfe, who would later win a Pulitzer Prize.

Peacocke would eventually work on her own compositions, including her first-ever album, “Waves & Lines.” This album introduced the uniquely Peacocke style of using interdisciplinary collaborations along with carrying a sociopolitical message.

“Waves & Lines” blends together electronic projections, acoustic music, spoken-word poetry, and other elements to create a truly multimedia experience. It is based on poems written by Afghan women and translated by author Eliza Griswold.

Peacocke uses various creative outlets, from dancers to visual artists, to write compositions for chamber ensembles, soloists, and orchestras. She has been commissioned by ensembles and orchestras all over the world, taking her to places like Austria, England, France, and Japan.

She currently resides in Hopewell Borough while teaching at NYU Steinhardt and as a preceptor at Princeton University.

Peacocke said everyone has an imprint of home on their hearts and carries home through their work. Several of her pieces reflect on the experience of an immigrant in a foreign country and being an outsider, particularly one who is relatively privileged compared to those demonized in the news, Peacock said.

“Music has always been a way that I can communicate fluently … I feel like now I can say what I want to say musically, even if I’m in a place that I don’t fully fit into culturally,” Peacocke said.

Classical music is not a platform that typically gives a voice to marginalized groups, but Peacocke focuses a lot of her work on the experience of those groups, especially women and refugees.

“I don’t think that the reach of the music is wide enough to really change things, but I think that’s not the job of an artist. I think the job of an artist is to reflect the world around them and to find beauty and find interesting things to reflect back at society,” Peacocke said.

The composer said her focus on injustice was a natural reaction to seeing marginalization throughout life as a woman and as a woman in a male-dominated field. As a creator with a smaller reach, Peacocke said it is the responsibility of those in power, whether it be political or social, to make a change.

Peacocke’s reaction to injustice is not limited to creating music. She is also one of the founders of the composer collective, Kinds of Kings, established in 2017.

Along with U.S.-based composers Shelley Washington and Maria Kaoutzani, the three started as recent graduates of NYU’s master’s program looking for guidance and support from one another. They eventually launched a website and social media platform as an all-female composer collective that would become Kinds of Kings.

Similar to the representation present in Peacocke’s compositions, the collective amplifies the voice of underrepresented people in addition to providing resources for early-career composers from historically marginalized backgrounds. They offer an annual Bouman Fellowship in which composer fellows will receive funding to write new pieces, mentorship, opportunities to premiere their work, and more.

Peacocke said the commission is a unique opportunity for composers since the job is done mostly alone, but having a community of like-minded individuals is helpful mentally and career-wise.

Looking forward, Peacocke said they hope to do more advocacy work and eventually turn into a 501(c)(3) organization.

Peacocke said she is looking forward to working on her own projects and personal plans, including puttering around in her garden. This year, she is finishing her PhD in music and humanistic studies at Princeton University.

Listeners of her music can expect a song cycle based on the love, sex, pregnancies, and death of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of “Frankenstein,” and her step-sister, Claire Clairmont. Rather than being commissioned to compose a piece, Peacocke has the creative liberty to write the text and music for its early iterations. The project will eventually bring in experts in stage work and creative practitioners, according to Peacocke, and may expand to a bigger instrumentation than it currently is.

“Manta” will not include the multimedia and stage production of the Mary Shelley project but will have a full professional orchestra and players from the Youth Orchestra of Central Jersey.

The piece is inspired by the mythology surrounding stingrays in Maori culture, in which they are seen as spirit guides and protectors of the sea. Peacocke was commissioned to write this composition by the Centre for New Zealand Music for Orchestra Wellington in New Zealand and Arohanui Strings+, an early intervention music education program.

Peacocke wrote “Manta” for the younger demographics and cultural backgrounds of children from this program. It will be its U.S. premiere and the first time Peacocke will hear this piece since she was not able to hear its worldwide opening in New Zealand.

“Having been immersed in Maori and New Zealand culture growing up, there’s elements of the soundscape and of the history of the country and the mythology of the country that come through in a less kind of specific way,” Peacocke said. “This particular piece, I wanted to be something that would feel programmatic and sound like something that the kids could actually relate to in their minds.”

Princeton Symphony Orchestra, Richardson Auditorium, Princeton University. Saturday, September 14, 8 p.m., and Sunday, September 15, 4 p.m. $35 and up. 609-497-0020 or www.princetonsymphony.org.