By Andrew Adler
Community Editor
L-R: Graham Parker, Georgie Parker-Benson, Max Parker-Benson and Adam Benson (photo courtesy of Graham Parker)
Once upon a time there was a young Jewish man growing up in northwest London who liked to sing. And pray. And when circumstances dictated, to question God.
His name was Graham Parker – the same Graham Parker who’s now CEO of the Louisville Orchestra. His Jewish journey has included dynamics on both sides of the Atlantic, in Israel – extending as well to an embrace of spiritualty beyond the norms of nominal Judaism. He is a U.K. native married to a psychologist living in New York City with their two adopted, multiracial children. In other words, life is conspicuously, vigorously, and more often than not, joyously full.
He’s also been largely responsible for nurturing an imaginative relationship between the LO and Louisville’s Jewish community. Just days ago, the orchestra acknowledged International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a rare performance of Viktor Ullmann’s opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis, which was sponsored in part by the Jewish Heritage Fund.
“Graham is a great asset for our community and has been an excellent partner to the Jewish Federation of Louisville and local synagogues in the past,” says Matt Golden, General Counsel & Chief Impact Officer at the Federation and the Trager Family JCC.
Two years ago, as director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, Golden was the Federations point person in organizing meetings between area synagogues and Black churches – alongside the LO’s “Journeys of Faith” concert series featuring works by Jewish and Black composers.
“We so appreciate him and the Jewish Heritage Fund’s investment in the Louisville Orchestra’s continued stewardship of Jewish stories,” Golden says.
Parker grew up in the London neighborhood of Edgemere, which in the 1970s and 1980s of his youth was solidly Jewish. His father was an accountant; his mother became an accomplished hairdresser.
Mom “was a natural saleswoman,” Parker recalls. Alongside styling hair, she worked in retail selling books to schools, an enterprise perfectly suited to what Parker says was her “very chatty” disposition. He says he his father was more reserved, at least outwardly.
“It was a very traditional kind of environment,” he says. “My parents were not practical, observant Jews in the strictest sense, but Jewish values were incredibly important. My mother grew up in a more observant household than my father, so she was a bit more of the enforcer about what she didn’t want us to do on Friday night. We watched TV, but she didn’t want us to do our homework or look at the time.
“I didn’t really understand why she made those distinctions,” Parker acknowledges, “but looking back on it, that was her way of creating a Friday night environment for the family.”
As he grew older, Judaism became a defining conduit to adulthood. Where some adolescents regarded religious studies more as a burden than a blessing, Parker saw his looming Bar Mitzvah as something to revel in. It marked a period when “my interest in Judaism really started to grow. “My parents organized what they used to call a ‘bar mitzvah breakfasts,’ where they’d have Sunday mornings where learn to bench (prayers of thanks recited after a meal) and go to shul.”
At the same time Parker was studying piano and flute. He sang in his school’s choir – a practice he continued decades later when living in New York. Eventually, though, the pressures of too many outside activities prompted him to cease his piano lessons. “I was spread very thin,” he says.
In 1988 he enrolled in Oxford Brookes University, located in the same town as the unrelated University of Oxford. For a time, he considered majoring in music – but soon realized he wasn’t quite gifted enough. “I was told – and I think it was right — ‘You’re good, but you’re not that good.’”
What Parker was exceptionally good at was “management and leadership.”
“I took one of those career aptitude tests when I was, I think, 16 – it came back and said, ‘Hotel Management.’ And I was like, ‘Huh?’ I hadn’t really thought about it, but I did love to cook. All my weekend and summer jobs were working in kitchens, or working in a food truck, whatever. I was very adept in the kitchen.”
(One such job had him managing an Oxford sandwich shop, where a regular customer was Tom Parker-Bowles – whose mother, Camilia Parker-Bowles, is now Queen Camilla to Britain’s King Charles III.)
Hotel Management…“I was like, ‘Actually, that sounds kind of cool,” Parker says. “So, I did it.”
What was principally responsible for his revelation: nature or nurture? Some of both, Parker believes.
“It’s not something I seem to work at,” he says. “I definitely have read a lot about leadership. But I feel like it’s an instinct for me. I will say that both of my parents were very leaderful people. Maybe not on the business side, but in their community service. My father and my mother were very involved in the Rotary movement – my mother was district governor; my father was district governor, and my father was on the national committee.”
Graham Parker also found inspiration as a Boy Scout, crediting his scout leader – a fellow named Alan – for instilling an enduring set of values. Later on, as a college student fulfilling a work-study requirement, he gained further insight.
“It was the first time I worked with a boss,” he says. “I used to spend a lot of time observing him – how he led, how he’d lead a meeting. He took the time to mentor me. If I asked him questions – ‘How would you approach this?’ – he’d spend time explaining it to me. And later in my career, once I moved to the States, I had some very powerful mentors who are still close to me.”
Parker made that move in 1995, when he was 25 and eager to broaden his professional horizons blending music and management. He landed in New York City with only a vague idea of what would come next.
Initially he fell back on the familiar: managing a restaurant. But that wasn’t much of a career boost, not for a guy pointing himself toward the classical music business.
Six weeks later he spotted a classified ad in the New York Times that read, “prominent arts organization seeks marketing assistant,” with a P.O. box attached. “So, I sent in my resumé and a cover letter, and about a week later I got a call from the New York Philharmonic. And after a couple of interviews, they offered me the job” – title: Operations Coordinator.
It was the beginning of what would evolve into a rapid professional trajectory that would include senior positions with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and NYC classical radio station WQXR. Then he moved on to what would be his most prominent gig: president of Decca Records U.S., part of the Universal Music Group conglomerate, where (in his own words) he was “responsible for the classical labels of the largest music company in the world.”
But the classical record business was buffeted by the not-so-brave new world of streaming services, and after five years Parker was ready to move on. It was then – in the fall of 2021 – that he was hired as the Louisville Orchestra’s interim executive director, working alongside the young, innovative (and Jewish) music director Teddy Abrams. One year later he was named the orchestra’s full-time CEO.
Under Parker and Abrams, the LO has fostered programming that reflects its creative synergy with Louisville’s Jewish community. In March of 2023 the orchestra presented a powerful installment in its four-year “Journeys of Faith” series – a collaboration with the Jewish Community Relations Council and several area churches that included a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2 (“The Age of Anxiety”).
“We had a good level of engagement from the JCRC and (Keneseth Israel Congregation) Rabbi Ben Freed,” Parker says, “who was leading a kind of pan-community, pan-faith Christian-Jewish dialogue. They came to the concerts together – it was a powerful collaboration, and we were very grateful.”
Freed recalls connecting with Parker about concerns that one of the “Journeys of Faith” concerts fell on Shabbat. “I asked to speak to someone at the orchestra.” Freed says. So “Graham and I get on Zoom, and he asks me how my chag was – this was right after Passover. And I was like, ‘Wait a second — who’s this guy? — he speaks my language!’ Since then, Graham has been a terrific thought partner and connector with the Jewish community.”
Lipp, too, admires how the orchestra making its case to Jewish Louisvillians.
“I’ve been overwhelmed with the creativity of the Parker/Abrams team in ways far beyond outreach to the Jewish community,” he says.
“Putting on (Gershwin’s) Rhapsody in Blue and Bernstein’s Mass were early highlights for me,” Lipp adds, “as well as the many times the orchestra performed at synagogues, including ours, with incredible programs. As for the Black/Jewish initiative — I was blown away with the multi-year vision, creativity and opportunity for learning that went along with it.”
These days Parker splits his time between Louisville and New York City, where his husband – psychologist Adam Benson – lives with their adopted children, son Max, 17, who is black; and daughter Georgie, 15, who is biracial.
“When Adam and I met (in 1999 when they were both singing in the same NYC choir) we both wanted a family. Our Jewish background was very important to both of us. We quickly realized adoption was the way we wanted to go, but we waited a long time before doing it – at that time it was not as common to find guys who had successfully adopted.”
From the start, “we have raised them as Jewish,” Parker says. “We took them to a mikvah when they were each two or three.
“It’s been a real eye-opener to raise black children as Jewish,” he’s observed, adding that their daughter has embraced her faith with particular fervor.
“Georgie has always been a little more interested in it,” Parker says. “She also has taken a considerable interest in Israel, where she celebrated her Bat Mitzvah. (and where Benson lived for a year as a 19-year-old studying at a Jerusalem yeshiva, has family). “She’s a real Zionist.”
Typically alternating week to week between Louisville and New York, Parker realizes that parenthood carries its share of bumps. “To raise a family like ours and think it’s not different from everyone else’s would be foolish,” he acknowledges. “So, we’ve adapted. We’re lucky that in our neighborhood there’s a very accepting, socially expansive, traditional shul we go to.”
Parker is unabashedly curious about spirituality apart from Judaism – at one point he studied at One Spirit Interfaith Seminary for ordination as an interfaith minister.
“I felt called to build on my foundation as a very committed Jew to study many other religions, to learn how to be of service to people on many different spiritual paths and to create ritual for them,” he remarked last year in a public Facebook post. “It is to this day, the greatest spiritual work I have ever done.”
That much said, “Judaism has always been my foundational kind of path,” he emphasizes. “But my spiritual journey has widened and become a bit more ecumenical.”
Meanwhile, what are the prospects for further Louisville-based collaborations? “We will continue to do programming that both has musical relevance to the Jewish community…or messages that are important to that community,” Parker says. “It’s important that we reach out and try to build that relationship.”