Alice Stuart Parker Pyle, known professionally as Alice Parker, was an American composer, arranger, conductor and teacher.
10 Facts About Alice Parker
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Alice Parker then spent a summer at Tanglewood, studying with the conductor Robert Shaw, with whom she went on to have a long and prolific association, and Julius Herford, before beginning a graduate program in choral conducting at the Juilliard School in New York City.
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Alice Parker arranged spirituals, hymns, and folk songs, including French, Spanish, Hebrew, and Ladino folk songs, many of which have become part of the repertoire of choirs around the world.
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Alice Parker attended the Federated Church in nearby Charlemont, Massachusetts, and assisted with its music program.
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Alice Parker served on the Board of Directors of Chorus America and was their first Director Laureate.
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Alice Parker received the Distinguished Composer of the Year award from the American Guild of Organists in 2000, the 2014 Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association, the Harvard Glee Club Foundation Medal in 2015, six honorary doctorates, and the Smith College Medal, as well as many other awards.
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Alice Parker was a Fellow of the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada, and was awarded grants from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the American Music Center.
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Alice Parker was honored by the International Emily Dickinson Society for her choral suite Heavenly Hurt.
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In 1954 Parker married Thomas F Pyle, a baritone soloist and member of the Robert Shaw Chorale, with whom she had two sons and three daughters.
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Alice Parker died at her home in Hawley on December 24,2023, at the age of 98.