Annette Peacock
An Acrobat's Heart

The year is 2000. Twelve years have passed since her last work "Abstract Contact" and the previous six albums in three decades of career, with high-level collaborations and associations as strange as they are diverse, mentioning first and foremost: Charlie Mingus, Tymothy Leary, LeRoy Jones and then again Allen Ginsberg, Robert Wyatt from Salvator Dalí to Brian Eno from Stockhausen to the collaboration proposals by David Bowie, which she always very politely turned down, remaining steadfast in her ways with that modest nonconformist attitude that makes her even more real. In 1998, she began a work that would last two long years filled with sacrifices, stubbornness against the press, the media, and her own audience, but ultimately bringing to light this great avant-garde music jewel that would make her return to the scene with a great leap and head held high.

Beautiful, with her braided hair like a child and features that closely resemble our Mediterranean beauties, Annette Peacock gives shape and life to "An Acrobat's Heart." The artist immerses herself in a world all her own, made of abstractionism passing through the curtains of a film, through the images of a Flemish painting and touching the waters of a lonely mountain lake. With her at the voice and piano, accompanied by a Norwegian string quartet (suggested to her by Manfred Eicher, legendary founder of ECM and producer of the album) consisting of two violins, a viola, and a cello, she plays between classical music and jazz stitching together and composing fifteen almost magical airs. During the listening, the range and development of her voice, a simple and delicate instrument, emanates light breezes that echo as if within an empty environment, like an acrobat swinging on her great swing managing to keep the audience on the edge of their seat with that splendid aura of a melancholic artist. The lyrics describe the pure and simple fragility of relationships, the loss of the attempt to love, an intimate, personal presentation that Annette offers to the listener with her great artistic ability.

She highlights (even though overshadowed for years) that ongoing research work to generate new forms of writing, to break rules and transform this album into something truly "unconventional." I will not start describing and illustrating tracks, it would all become very diluted, but let me tell you that "An Acrobat's Heart" is a true celebration of emotions, not only for the return of this great artist but also for this declaration of the memory of her origin.

The swing, meanwhile, keeps rocking and on it is seated a figure producing drawings, angles, that float and extend into the air like actual musical notes that will transport you to other places… distant places, inside the heart of the acrobat.