Jethro Tull Arranger and Keyboardist Dee Palmer Dies at 88

10:38 AM EDT on June 15, 2026

Dee Palmer, the composer, arranger, and keyboardist best know for her tenure in Jethro Tull, has died. According to a note from Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson , Palmer passed away at home in Shropshire supported by family members after a long illness. She was 88.

Palmer was born in the Hendon area of London in 1937. While serving in the British military, she took up the clarinet and later attended the Royal Academy of Music. During her studies, she won the Boosey and Hawkes Prize for woodwind, but she soon gave up clarinet to focus on keyboards and composition, which led to another award, the Eric Coates Prize.

Palmer worked as a freelance arranger and conductor for recording sessions, making her debut as a composer and arranger on Bert Jansch's 1967 album Nicola . The following year, producer Terry Ellis hired Palmer to write horn and string parts Jethro Tull's song "Move On Alone." As AllMusic Guide tells it, not many composers and arrangers were willing to work with rock bands at the time, and Palmer's enthusiasm for the gig led to more work. By 1971's proggy, folky hard rock opus Aqualung , Palmer's arrangements had become crucial to Jethro Tull's sound, and she was essentially functioning as a member of the band. By 1975 she was performing with them onstage, re-creating her string parts on keyboard, a role that continued until she left Jethro Tull in 1980.

Upon her departure, Palmer formed the short-lived band Tallis with Jethro Tull keyboardist John Evan and drummer Barriemore Barlow, but soon she was back to film scores and recording sessions. Over the next few decades, she arranged orchestral collections of music by Tull and other classic rock bands including Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Queen, and the Beatles.

Palmer had four children with wife Maggie. Following Maggie's death in 1995, Palmer came out as transgender and intersex in 1998, noting that a lifelong experience of gender dysphoria had "started to reassert itself again."

She released her debut solo album Through Darkened Glass in 2018. At the time, she shared this note on her website :

After fifty years in the music business and having worked largely with other people’s music – albeit interspersed with commissions for film and television scores and the occasional, more serious, Cantata, String Quartet, etc – it seemed appropriate to write, record and offer up (particularly to those who have supported my work) an album of original songs, most of which were inspired by events and observations in my life hitherto.

It was great fun recording them – I hope you enjoy them.

In her later years, Palmer toured with the Martin Barre Band. According to Anderson, "Dee had not been well during the last couple of years but, last time we spoke earlier in the year, was still planning to record with an orchestra the music score of the ballet The Water’s Edge which Dee... Martin Barre and I had written for performances by the Scottish Ballet in 1979. I had agreed to play flute on the new recording and assumed it was delayed but still on the cards."

Below, revisit some of Palmer's work.

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_Originally reported by [Stereogum](https://stereogum.com/2502321/dee-palmer-jethro-tull-arranger-and-keyboardist-dead-at-88/news/)._