Alice Parker

Alice Parker, internationally renowned composer, conductor and teacher, began composing at age eight, and wrote her first orchestral score while still in high school. She studied composition and conducting at Smith College and the Juilliard School where she began her long association with Robert Shaw As Shaw began to organize the Robert Shaw Chorale, he enlisted the young Parker to do research and create choral arrangements for the new touring and recording ensemble. It was at this time that Alice Parker married baritone Thomas Pyle, and for the next twenty years their musical lives revolved around the Shaw Chorale. The many Parker/Shaw settings of American folksongs, hymns and spirituals from that period form an enduring repertoire for choruses all around the world.

Ms. Parker continued to work on her own compositions and arrangements and has composed in all the choral forms from opera to cantata, from sacred anthems to songs on texts by distinguished poets. She has been commissioned by such well-known groups as Chanticleer, the Vancouver Chamber Singers, and the Atlanta Symphony, as well as hundreds of community, school and church choruses. Her works appear in the catalogs of a dozen publishing companies.

In 1985, singers and choral directors who had been fired by her talent and love for the varied and subtle sounds of voices singing together, convinced her to start her own group. MELODIOUS ACCORD, INC. is focused on what is for her the heart of vocal music: the melody. The Musicians of MELODIOUS ACCORD, a sixteen-voice professional chorus, have recorded: O Sing the Glories, (2004, seventeen anthems composed or arranged by Alice Parker); Sweet Manna, (1999, early American hymns); King and the Duke (1998, a tribute to Martin Luther King and Duke Ellington); Take Me To The Water, (1994, thirteen spirituals); Transformations (1991, rereleased 2011, American hymns and folk songs), and Spiritual Songs. The Alice Parker Recording Project, begun in 2000, has outlined an ambitious program of making more of her works available on CDs. To date: My Love and I (2003, love songs for male voices); Listen, Lord, 2004, (a cantata based on text by James Weldon Johnson and a new series of spirituals); O Sing the Glories, (2004, a collection of anthems); The Family Reunion, (2007, excerpts from a one act folk opera); Angels and Challengers, (2008, settings of works by 4 American women poets); Singers Glen, (2009, an opera based on the life and works of Joseph Funk), Saints Bound for Heaven (2010, a 25th Anniversary collection of 'Alice Parker Favorites') and And Glory Shone (2012, Christmas hymns and carols) have been released.

Alice Parker continues to win 'converts' to the cause of choral music. Through the Melodious Accord Fellowship Program, mid-career professional musicians are brought together for inspiration and refreshment in their teaching, composing and conducting under her mentorship. Her techniques have encouraged a generation of music teachers and choral conductors to think about music and the act of conducting in new ways. No less an authority than Robert Shaw himself has said of Parker that "…she possesses a rare and creative musical intelligence."

Now a resident of western Massachusetts, Parker has published books on melodic styles, choral improvisation and 'Good Singing in Church'. The Anatomy of Melody was published in 2006. In 2010, as part of the Melodious Accord 25th Anniversary celebration, The Alice Parker’s Melodious Accord Hymnal, containing 150 hymns set, composed and arranged by her was introduced. The second edition of Melodious Accord: good singing in church, her classic book on song leading and congregational singing was released in 2013. Five videos have appeared, showing her work with hymns and folksongs. Alice Parker has served on the Board of Chorus America and has been named Director Laureate by them. She was honored by the dedication to her of the Eastern Division Convention of the American Choral Directors Association and received the Robert Shaw Award at the National Convention of the ACDA in 2013. Named Distinguished Composer of the Year 2000 by the American Guild of Organists, she has also received honors from the Hymn Society. She is the recipient of six honorary doctorates and the Smith College Medal as well as grants from ASCAP, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the American Music Center.