2025 Honoree
At our annual meeting in 2025, we inducted long-time resident Patricia Parker into our 50-year Hall of Fame. The remarks made by Hedy Campbell at the induction ceremony are transcribed below.
Patricia Parker
Like so many people I’ve interviewed for the Hall of Fame, Patricia came to New York following a dream. She was raised in North Carolina, where she discovered her love of music and began performing as a very young child. She completed her undergraduate work in music at Converse College, which at the time was the oldest school of music for girls in the United States.
After receiving a master’s degree from Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, she moved to New York City, where she hoped to launch her career and land an audition with the Metropolitan Opera. She took a day job as a receptionist at a law firm and squeezed in auditions before and after work. She learned a lot about the audition process, including how important it is to research the role in advance and choose an appropriate selection. This strategy succeeded, and she ultimately enjoyed a long career in music as a teacher and performer in all manner of productions.
Her professional credits include the national touring company of Sweeney Todd—she snagged one of seven parts that 400 people auditioned for, along the way becoming close with Angela Lansbury, whose approval she earned after Angela asked Patricia about her warmup process.
She has had recitals at both national and international venues, performed solo with renowned orchestras and been in numerous opera companies. She also has a variety of television and film credits, including the 1982 TV-movie version of Sweeney Todd, also with Angela Lansbury. She was invited to sing at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and received excellent reviews. Thirty-five years ago, while appearing in a Tennessee Williams play, A Perfect Analysis Given by a Parrot, she met, in her words, “a nice man,” Jonathan Morrison, whom she’s been with ever since. We look forward to inducting Jonathan into the Hall of Fame in a few more years! Their careers—in addition to acting, Jonathan is also a conductor—have taken them many places, including St. Petersburg, Russia, where they lived for a year and a half.
Although Patricia never did get to perform at the Met, when we spoke, she expressed no regrets. In fact, she repeatedly used the word “lucky” to describe how she feels about the direction her career took and how fortunate she was to work with as many important figures in the arts as she did: George Balanchine, Hal Prince, George Hearn, and Stephen Sondheim, to name just a few.
Patricia originally settled into an apartment on West End Ave. and 104th St., which she gave up because she realized it was too large for her to afford comfortably on her own, and she didn’t want to commit to having roommates. At a concert at Carnegie Hall, a colleague who lived in the Broadmoor recommended the building, and she’s lived in a sun-filled apartment overlooking Broadway ever since.
Patricia loves that we have great access to public transit (although she hates that people stand in the doorway of the subway) and that the neighborhood has a sense of spaciousness; she also appreciates that there are still other musicians living in her building, although fewer than before, a difference in the neighborhood that she wishes wasn’t the case. There are also too many cars now, she observes.
She enjoys our area’s proximity to all manner of arts events, which are critical to her continuing education as an artist. As was true when she moved to New York 50 years ago, she loves that “you can find every kind of human here. We may not agree on all things, but we’re safe here in a way we might not be elsewhere. You can be anything you want to be here if you have the wherewithal to push through and do it.”
We welcome Patricia Parker to our Neighborhood Hall of Fame.
Patricia Parker
Like so many people I’ve interviewed for the Hall of Fame, Patricia came to New York following a dream. She was raised in North Carolina, where she discovered her love of music and began performing as a very young child. She completed her undergraduate work in music at Converse College, which at the time was the oldest school of music for girls in the United States.
After receiving a master’s degree from Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, she moved to New York City, where she hoped to launch her career and land an audition with the Metropolitan Opera. She took a day job as a receptionist at a law firm and squeezed in auditions before and after work. She learned a lot about the audition process, including how important it is to research the role in advance and choose an appropriate selection. This strategy succeeded, and she ultimately enjoyed a long career in music as a teacher and performer in all manner of productions.
Her professional credits include the national touring company of Sweeney Todd—she snagged one of seven parts that 400 people auditioned for, along the way becoming close with Angela Lansbury, whose approval she earned after Angela asked Patricia about her warmup process.
She has had recitals at both national and international venues, performed solo with renowned orchestras and been in numerous opera companies. She also has a variety of television and film credits, including the 1982 TV-movie version of Sweeney Todd, also with Angela Lansbury. She was invited to sing at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and received excellent reviews. Thirty-five years ago, while appearing in a Tennessee Williams play, A Perfect Analysis Given by a Parrot, she met, in her words, “a nice man,” Jonathan Morrison, whom she’s been with ever since. We look forward to inducting Jonathan into the Hall of Fame in a few more years! Their careers—in addition to acting, Jonathan is also a conductor—have taken them many places, including St. Petersburg, Russia, where they lived for a year and a half.
Although Patricia never did get to perform at the Met, when we spoke, she expressed no regrets. In fact, she repeatedly used the word “lucky” to describe how she feels about the direction her career took and how fortunate she was to work with as many important figures in the arts as she did: George Balanchine, Hal Prince, George Hearn, and Stephen Sondheim, to name just a few.
Patricia originally settled into an apartment on West End Ave. and 104th St., which she gave up because she realized it was too large for her to afford comfortably on her own, and she didn’t want to commit to having roommates. At a concert at Carnegie Hall, a colleague who lived in the Broadmoor recommended the building, and she’s lived in a sun-filled apartment overlooking Broadway ever since.
Patricia loves that we have great access to public transit (although she hates that people stand in the doorway of the subway) and that the neighborhood has a sense of spaciousness; she also appreciates that there are still other musicians living in her building, although fewer than before, a difference in the neighborhood that she wishes wasn’t the case. There are also too many cars now, she observes.
She enjoys our area’s proximity to all manner of arts events, which are critical to her continuing education as an artist. As was true when she moved to New York 50 years ago, she loves that “you can find every kind of human here. We may not agree on all things, but we’re safe here in a way we might not be elsewhere. You can be anything you want to be here if you have the wherewithal to push through and do it.”
We welcome Patricia Parker to our Neighborhood Hall of Fame.
