Peaches (Merrill Nisker)

Peaches (Merrill Nisker) — musician with roots in the Russian Empire

Peaches (born Merrill Nisker) is a Canadian-German electronic musician, performer, and provocateur born in Toronto whose confrontational, sexually explicit, feminist music has made her one of the most influential underground artists of the past 25 years. Based in Berlin for decades, she has collaborated with Iggy Pop, Chilly Gonzales, and major artists worldwide.

Tracing the roots — Canada

Her family has Polish and Russian Jewish ancestry — her grandparents came from the Eastern European Jewish communities of the Russian Empire. Growing up in Toronto's Jewish community before relocating to Berlin, she built a career of radical performance that has elements of the Jewish tradition of speaking uncomfortable truths from the margins.

A career defined by ambition