Idaho-born double-bassist Gary Peacock (1935) started out with important collaborations in the late 1950s with Bud Shank (Shank and Peacock also played on Ravi Shankar's Improvisations of november 1961) and then in Los Angeles with Prince Lasha's The Cry (november 1962), also featuring Sonny Simmons, then in New York with Bill Evans (in december 1963 he played on his Trio 64) and Albert Ayler (he played on Ghosts, Prophecy, Spiritual Unity and Spirits Rejoice), where he got to befriend Paul Bley and Paul Motian.
Paul Bley With Gary Peacock collects studio sessions from 1964 and 1968.
He played in Tony Williams' ensemble for their seminal
Life Time (august 1964) and Spring (august 1965).
He had already married at the age of 21 the 19-year-old Annette.
Annette started a collaboration with Paul Bley in the mid-1960s and Gary
joined them on Virtuosi (june 1967).
He recorded two albums with Masabumi Kikuchi and Hiroshi Murakami:
Eastward (february 1970)
and
Voices (april 1971);
and then Tales Of Another (february 1977)
with Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette,
containing the three-movement suite Trilogy.
Japan Suite (july 1976),
recorded with Barry Altschul and Paul Bley,
contains the 32-minute suiteJapan Suite.
December Poems (december 1977) was his true first album.
After Shift in the Wind (february 1980), a collaboration with
pianist Art Lande and drummer Eliot Zigmund, there came his second album,
Voice From The Past - Paradigm (august 1981), performed by the
quartet of Gary Peacock (bass), Jack
DeJohnette (drums), Jan Garbarek (tenor and soprano saxes) and Tomasz
Stanko (trumpet).
His collaboration with Keith Jarrett was by far the most notorious.
Peacock started playing with Jarrett from the "Standards Trio" of 1983
and continued until the 2000s.
Peacock's third album
Guamba (march 1987) featured
saxophonist Jan Garbarek, trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, and drummer Peter Erskine.
After a Partners (december 1989) with Paul Bley,
Peacock formed Tethered Moon, a trio with Masabumi Kikuchi and Paul Motian, that released First Meeting (october 1990 and march 1991),
Tethered Moon (november 1991),
Triangle (same session),
and
Tethered Moon Play Kurt Weill (december 1994).
Annette (april 1992) documents a collaboration with Franz Koglmann and Paul Bley.
Peacock took a detour into bossanova with Brazilian singer and guitarist Toninho Horta on Once I Loved (1992) and From Ton To Tom (april/july 1998).
He also recorded two collaborations with guitarist Ralph Towner,
Oracle (may 1993) and
A Closer View (december 1995), and one
with guitarist Bill Frisell,
Just So Happens (february 1994).
A trio with Gary Peacock and Paul Bley is documented on Not Two Not One (january 1998) and on the live When Will The Blues Leave (march 1999).
Paired with pianist Marc Copland he recorded Insight (october 2007).
Alexandra Grimal (tenor and soprano saxes), Lee Konitz (alto sax), Gary Peacock (bass), and drummer Paul Motian recorded Owls Talk (december 2009).
He played on several Marilyn Crispell albums:
Nothing Ever Was Anyway (september 1996),
Amaryllis (february 2000),
and
Azure (february 2011).
In Motion (november 2014) was the trio of Richard Poole (drums), Marilyn Crispell (piano) and Peacock.
The Gary Peacock Trio with Joey Baron (drums) and Marc Copland (piano) recorded Now This (july 2014) and Tangents (may 2016).
Peacock died in 2020.
