Harlan Parker is the conductor of The Peabody Conservatory Wind Ensemble and Coordinator of the Music Education Division at the Peabody Conservatory of Music of The Johns Hopkins University. Under his direction, the Peabody Conservatory Wind Ensemble has given over twenty world premières and has performed at State, Regional and National Conventions. Considered “one of the finest ensembles of its kind in the nation”, the Peabody Conservatory Wind Ensemble has received critical acclaim from contemporary composers such as David Amram, James Syler, Eric Ewazen, Stella Sung and Johan de Meij. Their début CD, From an Antique Land, has been praised as one of the most exciting wind ensemble recordings in recent times and the second CD, Orff, Bird and Reed, was released in August 2006 on the Naxos label (8.570242). Of the performance of La Fiesta Mexicana on the second CD, composer H. Owen Reed, in a letter to Harlan Parker writes, “I have just listened, twice, to your brilliant recording of my La Fiesta Mexicana, and I must tell you that it was a thrill to hear my music performed exactly as I always hoped for. Your total understanding of the work showed up on all parameters. Your tempos were on the mark, and the overall conception of the work was superb.”
As well as his duties at Peabody, Harlan Parker has a very active musical life outside of the Conservatory. He is a Past-President of The Conductors Guild, an international service organization dedicated to encouraging and promoting the highest standards in the art and profession of conducting. He is also a member of The American Bandmasters Association, an organization whose membership is by invitation and recognizes “outstanding achievement in the field of the concert band and its music”. Additionally, he is active regionally, nationally and internationally as a guest conductor, conducting pedagogue, clinician and adjudicator, having worked with professional musicians and students from all fifty states and over 35 countries.
In his first year as a faculty member at Peabody, Harlan Parker reorganized the Peabody Conservatory Wind Ensemble in its present format after several years of non-existence and was awarded the Peabody Student Council Faculty/Administration Award for outstanding contributions to the Peabody Community. In the fall of 2000 he accepted the first graduate class of Wind Conducting students. Graduates and students of the programme are teachers/conductors in high schools and colleges and conductors of military bands. He also serves as the Coordinator of Information Technology at the Peabody Conservatory. Harlan Parker received his Bachelor of Music from Emporia State University and his Master of Music and Doctor of Philosophy in Music Education with an emphasis in Conducting from the University of Kansas and has completed post-doctoral work at the Laban/Bartenineff Institute of Movement Studies in New York.
To know more about Harlan Parker, please go to http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/harlanparker
