Aquamarine: "an entrancing gloss on water-musics past and present ... Sleek and focussed, its references to romantic piano repertoire were clear but unparochial - a rippling polyphony of scales that mimicked the subtle geometry of light and movement on a pond, a repeated pitch treading minimalist waters as a phrase of Chopin lapped against it, a high G sharp struck like a hammer on an anvil as the simple harmonies beneath it mutated."
Elissa Poole, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada, May 8 2000.

"A postmodernist with a conscience, Palmer fessed up to her sources ... but, in the final count, it was her sheer wizardry with sound that made the works come off [Trellis and Secret Arnold] ... Palmer's music can be as sinuous as a torch song or as spiky as Stravinsky."
William Dart, The Listener, New Zealand, July 3 1999.

"One of the most exciting composers from this country since the 1970s."
Secret Arnold: "a commanding orchestral sound that leaves you itching for more."
Heath Lees, The New Zealand Herald, New Zealand, May 6 1999.

"In Juliet Palmer's Room ... the operatic nature of the music lends itself beautifully to the poignant melodrama of the choreography...The tortured, fierce, stiff, angled, staccato movements of Bill James...a haunting paean to the disadvantaged and the dispossessed."
Paula Citron, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada, November 18 1999

"Starving Poetry ... followed through on the promise of its first few phrases. In a landscape as deliberately aurally deprived as hers, any false step would have shattered its fragile beauty."
Elissa Poole, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada, January 14 1999.

Circus Dog: "Out of the heady, jangly ferment spill shards of Thelonious Monk, Cecil Taylor and John Cage like a rainfall of razorblades."
Michael Norris, Music in New Zealand, November 1999.

"Ideas and methods to the left of normal...Deep Stew is fractured groove music of the art sort, pushed along by a rickety but insistent pulse, reminiscent of Captain Beefheart's rhythmic chang-a-lang. That drive is pulled apart to reveal something more cryptic and spacious...another rock-cum-minimalist barnstormer."
Josef Woodard, The Los Angeles Times, January 8 1999.

"Juliet Palmer's Circus Dog employs metallic gadgets laid directly on the piano strings ... imagine some peculiar cocktail piano piece by John Cage."
Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, April 26 1997.

"Make no mistake this is full-in blood and guts sound fusion at the cutting edge of new music. The primeval sonorities ... at the deep end of the band in Juliet Palmer's Deep Stew made your hair curl."
Rodney Smith, The Advertiser, Adelaide, Australia, March 11 1996.

"Juliet Palmer ... contributed Deep Stew, a piece with a free sense of interplay and ... adventurous solo writing."
Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, March 16 1995.

"Every word was crystal clear in Surrender?, where, flanked by video screens of old Doris Day movies and a huge silently singing mouth above, Juliet Palmer told of Doris Day's life. In highlighting the tragic events of one woman's life, the story belonged to many different women. Palmer used tape loops and samples to great effect and with voice, clarinet and film created a very moving musical slice of life."
Janet Roddick, The Listener, New Zealand, September 4 1993.

"I discovered and enjoyed ... Juliet Palmer."
Kyle Gann, The Village Voice, March 2 1992.
 

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