Two years after receiving the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Award at Mystic Film Festival, "Alice Parker" by Eduardo Montes-Bradley, remains among the three most-watched documentaries on the Heritage Film Project lineup on Kanopy Streaming and Alexander Street Press.
Alice Parker (b. 1925) is a distinguished composer, conductor, and choral music teacher. In a career that spans some seventy years, Alice found early prominence as protégé of conductor Robert Shaw, with whom she collaborated as a researcher and arranger of folk songs, hymns, and spirituals for the Robert Shaw Chorale. Alice’s compositional reach is extensive and inclusive, from children’s songs and church hymns to operas and significant concert works. In Alice: At Home with Alice Parker, the composer collaborates with Eduardo Montes-Bradley in an intimate portrayal of her life that illuminates her artistic achievements and her extraordinary kindness and passion for life. Renowned within the choral music community, Alice Parker is a modern pioneer in expanding the audience for choral music in all its “high” and “low” forms. This achievement was especially significant before the now-ubiquitous recording and distribution technologies. Among her contemporaries, Alice Parker is distinctive for her convictions about the fundamental value of singing for every individual and the capacity of choral singing to create social bonds that touch on the spiritual and afford intimations of the divine.