ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Parker's talk at the Summit on Improvisation, Pedagogy, and Community Impact, presented by the Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice (ICASP) project on 2013, at Boarding House for the Arts in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Parker discusses his life in music, describing the process through which he learned to make music and find his voice in New York in the 1970s. Crucially, he reminds people to anchor theories of pedagogy in the language and logic of practice, observing that 'improvisation' was not an operative term in the community that taught him how to 'just play'. Parker had played with Joseph Jarman in 1973 at the Artists House. All the music was amazing. Every person he met was like a school unto itself and every gig a class in improvisation. Frank Wright was different from Daniel Carter and Daniel was different from Byard Lancaster. It was about the music, building castles with sound that could be the description of improvisation.
