Dee Palmer

Dee Palmer was born David Palmer on 2 July 1937 in Hendon, London, England. Her parents came from Hereford and Shropshire, and she later described moving to the Welsh border as "in a way, coming home". She was born intersex, with genital ambiguity, and was assigned male at birth; she underwent several surgeries in childhood and early adulthood, the last in her late twenties. She later said that gender dysphoria had been part of her life since she was young.

According to her official Jethro Tull biography, Palmer began her musical life in the Royal Horse Guards cavalry regiment, learning clarinet at Kneller Hall, the Royal Military School of Music. She then studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music with Richard Rodney Bennett. She won the Eric Coates Prize in her graduation year and the Boosey and Hawkes Prize, and taught clarinet to second-study students while still a student. In 1994 the Academy made her a Fellow (FRAM).

Palmer started as a freelance arranger and conductor of recording sessions, played in a club trio and worked as a ghost writer and arranger. Her first album project was Bert Jansch's Nicola (1967).

Terry Ellis, manager of the young Jethro Tull, then asked her to arrange horns and strings for Mick Abrahams' "Move On Alone" on the debut album This Was (1968). Ian Anderson followed with a request for the string quartet on "A Christmas Song" (B-side of "Love Story", November 1968). Palmer arranged and conducted orchestral parts on Stand Up, Benefit, Aqualung, Thick as a Brick, A Passion Play, War Child, Minstrel in the Gallery and Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young to Die!.

At the end of 1975 she joined the touring band as second keyboard player, using new synthesisers to play the string parts live, and was a full member from 1976 to 1980 on Songs from the Wood, Heavy Horses, Bursting Out and Stormwatch. With Anderson and Martin Barre she wrote the 1979 Scottish Ballet score The Water's Edge.

After the 1980 line-up change around the album A she formed Tallis with John Evan, then returned to film, advertising and session work. She reunited with Anderson for a German TV performance of Walk Into Light (1983), and orchestrated A Classic Case (1985) with the London Symphony Orchestra. Her symphonic rock albums included We Know What We Like (Genesis, 1987), Objects of Fantasy (Pink Floyd, 1989), Symphonic Music of Yes (1993, with Steve Howe and Bill Bruford), an orchestral Sgt. Pepper (1994) recorded for EMI at Abbey Road by the Royal Academy of Music, Passing Open Windows (Queen, 1996) and Norske popklassikere (1996), which went gold in Norway. She also conducted the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra's Christmas specials.

In 2018 she released her solo album Through Darkened Glass, featuring Martin Barre, and later toured with the Martin Barre Band in the United States and Latin America. A Tallis album, In Alia Musica Spero, appeared in 2021.

Palmer married Margaret (Maggie) when young. They had four children. Maggie died in the mid 1990s (Wikipedia gives 1995). In 1998 Palmer came out as transgender and intersex and became Dee Palmer. Accounts of the year of her gender surgery differ: Ian Anderson and the Jethro Tull website say 2004, while she told the Hereford Times in 2025 that it was in 1996. She was autistic. She lived for a time on a small estate in Surrey and later in Hove, near Brighton, before moving in 2014 to the English and Welsh border near Knighton, just inside Shropshire.

Palmer spoke candidly in interviews about her transition and her intersex body, and about the way grief after her wife's death brought her long-held gender dysphoria back to the surface. She was proud of her years with Jethro Tull, saying of the 1960s that she could remember them quite clearly, and of the band's arena tours: "For that part of my life I will always be grateful." Late in life she used her name to support local health care, staging a fundraising concert for the Knighton and Presteigne Leg Club, which had treated her oedema.

Fans and critics regard Palmer's arrangements as central to the 1970s Jethro Tull sound, from the strings of Minstrel in the Gallery to the orchestral colour of Aqualung and War Child. Pat Kent, author of a guide to the band, wrote that her knowledge of composition, arrangement and orchestration was extraordinary and that her fingerprints are found across a body of work far broader than many realise. Her symphonic rock albums helped popularise orchestral versions of progressive rock, and in later life she spoke openly and often about being transgender and intersex.

Eric Coates Prize, Royal Academy of Music. Boosey and Hawkes Prize. Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music (FRAM), 1994. Gold album in Norway for Norske popklassikere with the London Symphony Orchestra.

With Jethro Tull as arranger: This Was (1968), Stand Up (1969), Benefit (1970), Aqualung (1971), Thick as a Brick (1972), A Passion Play (1973), War Child (1974), Minstrel in the Gallery (1975), Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young to Die! (1976). As a member: Songs from the Wood (1977), Heavy Horses (1978), Bursting Out (1978), Stormwatch (1979), plus the archival Nightcap (1993) and Live at Madison Square Garden 1978 (2009). Symphonic: A Classic Case (1985), We Know What We Like (1987), Objects of Fantasy (1989), Symphonic Music of Yes (1993), Orchestral Sgt. Pepper's (1994), Passing Open Windows (1996), Norske popklassikere (1996). Solo: Through Darkened Glass (2018). Tallis: In Alia Musica Spero (2021). Other: Bert Jansch, Nicola (1967).

Dee Palmer died in June 2026 at the age of 88. Ian Anderson announced on 13 June 2026 that she had died at home in Shropshire, supported by family members at her bedside, after a couple of years of poor health. The cause of death was not made public. Some reports gave the place as a hospice; this profile follows Anderson's statement. She is survived by her four children.