Craig B. Parker has taught at Kansas State University since 1982, and served as Director of Graduate Studies in Music from 1991 to 1999. He earned degrees at the University of Georgia (B.M. in trumpet performance; Third Honor Graduate with General Honors and Honors in Music, 1973) and UCLA (M.A. and Ph.D. in historical musicology in 1976 and 1981, respectively). Dr. Parker also attended the Yale Summer School of Music and Art (1972) and has done post-doctoral work at the University of Michigan (1984) and Harvard University (1991) on fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

He has been a member of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, Spoleto (Italy) Festival Orchestra, Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, Composers Brass Quintet, and many other symphonic and chamber groups. He is co-founder, director, and solo cornetist with the Society for American Music Brass Band, an organization which specializes in the performance of nineteenth-century American brass band music. His recording of Petr Eben’s 1976 composition, Windows for trumpet and organ, with Robert Edwards for Arnold Sound Recordings, has been featured on the Public Radio International show, Pipedreams.

Dr. Parker maintains an active private studio of non-collegiate brass students. His former students have won three national solo competitions, placed second in national competitions four times, and have won honorable mention in three national solo competitions. His former private students perform with the Kansas City and Phoenix symphonies, as well as several regional orchestras.

Dr. Parker’s research interests include music by Venetian composers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the music of Handel, the musicians associated with Sousa’s Band, music since 1945 (especially that of Gunther Schuller, Joan Tower, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich), and brass music of all epochs. He has published over forty articles and reviews in such scholarly journals as Ad Parnassum, American Music, Brass Bulletin, Bulletin of the Society for American Music, College Music Society Newsletter, College Music Symposium, Historic Brass Society Journal, International Trumpet Guild Journal, Newsletter of the Institute for Studies in American Music, Notes of the Music Library Association, and the Sonneck Society Bulletin. He has delivered scholarly papers and performed at numerous regional, national, and international conferences in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Switzerland, Thailand, and the United States. In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of John Philip Sousa (1854-1832), Dr. Parker presented lectures on “The March King” and his professional concert band in Australia, Great Britain, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Ohio. In fall 2004, he taught what was probably the first-ever graduate-level seminar devoted exclusively to the life and works of Sousa. He is currently President of the American Band History Interest Group of the Society for American Music. His most recent conference presentations include lectures on “Arnold Schoenberg at UCLA” at A Schoenberg Retrospective held at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and “A Brief History of the College Music Society Great Plains Chapter” at the joint meeting of the CMS Great Lakes and Great Plains chapters in Normal, Illinois.

Dr. Parker was the winner of the 2005 Phi Kappa Phi Artist Award in Fine Arts, Creative Arts, Graphic and Visual Arts, and/or the Performing Arts, presented by the KSU chapter of this honor society. He is the first musician to win this award. Dr. Parker has also been awarded the William L. Stamey Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Instruction at Kansas State University.

Formerly an associate editor of the International Trumpet Guild Journal (he was editor of the Recordings Reviews column for the journal American Music (published by the University of Illinois Press for the Society for American Music) from 1993 until 2006. Dr. Parker teaches graduate and undergraduate music history and literature courses and plays trumpet with the KSU Faculty Brass Quintet.