FOR RELEASE
9 AM EDT, July 1, 2000

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS AWARDS $25,000 GRANT TO MELODIOUS ACCORD
RECORDINGS OF MUSIC BY CHORAL LEGENDS ALICE PARKER AND ROBERT SHAW PLANNED

New York, NY, -- The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded a $25,000 grant to the New York City-based choral organization Melodious Accord, announced Alice Parker, founder and artistic director. The grant will be used is to produce the first four compact discs in the Alice Parker Recording Project, featuring the music of Alice Parker and Robert Shaw performed by the professional chorus The Musicians of Melodious Accord under Ms. Parker’s direction.

"This recognition of Melodious Accord by the National Endowment for the Arts allows us to move immediately into high gear," began Ms. Parker, internationally recognized choral composer, conductor, and educator. "We are honored to be ranked among the top ensembles in the country and thank the NEA for giving Melodious Accord this generous show of support. It is now up to us to raise $25,000 in matching funds to realize the first one-fifth of the project’s financing. And we’re well on our way with this."

Melodious Accord was incorporated in December, 1985. Since that time the organization has sponsored workshops, presented public concerts, and made recordings of choral music with repertoire ranging from 16th-century sacred songs to contemporary African-American Spirituals. Melodious Accord’s recent recording, "King and The Duke: American Praise" (Ethereal Recordings ER 111), features Alice Parker’s cantata "Sermon from the Mountain" celebrating the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ms. Parker's adaptation of the music from Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts. This critically acclaimed recording, with narration by Robert Shaw in his last recording, is distributed nationally by Melodious Accord, Inc. and Ethereal Records. "King and the Duke" has also been broadcast on the syndicated radio program, "The First Art" which was distributed free of charge to 281 radio stations in the United States and Puerto Rico, reaching 720,000 listeners.

Melodious Accord also publishes and distributes a newsletter containing essays by Alice Parker and the latest information about concerts, recordings, and educational activities. It is published 3-4 times annually and has a circulation of nearly 5,000 which is mailed to professional and amateur musicians, poets, educators and music enthusiasts in 47 states and 19 countries.

The first four compact disc recordings of the Alice Parker Recording Project include Vive L'Amour!, arrangements of love songs for male voices; American Women Poets, Parker’s settings of poetry by Dickinson, St. Vincent Millay and others; The Family Reunion: A Backyard Opera based on American folk songs and dances; and Singers Glen, an original opera based on shape-note hymns from Virginia Singing Schools in the 1840’s.

"The Alice Parker Recording Project will make an important and lasting contribution to the field of American music," stated Timothy Riley, Chairman of Melodious Accord, Inc.. "Not only does this project document the work of Alice Parker, one of America’s leading choral artists for nearly five decades, it celebrates her work in a singularly appropriate manner ‹through song."

Alice Parker has been awarded honorary degrees from Hamilton College, Bluffton College, Macalester College and Westminster Choir College. She was honored by Chorus America at its annual conference in June 2000 for her outstanding contributions to choral music. Ms. Parker will receive the Distinguished Composer Award from the American Guild of Organists in July. Also in July , Parker will be made a Fellow of the Hymn Society of America at its annual conference in Boston. She has a schedule of international conducting assignments this summer which include Innsbruck, Austria, and Edmonton, Alberta.