Who’s Teddy Parker?

As a songwriter who loves lyrical storytelling, Teddy plays often with how the way a situation is framed will influence the message taken away from it. So, when asked what they do for a living, they smile and declare, “I manipulate people’s emotions!” They could just as easily say, “I help people access their feelings and connect to one another,” casting themself in a humanitarian light; or they could say, “I give people an escape from a world that tries to suppress their zest for life,” for a more spiritual spin on their work.

Teddy found both their voice and community at summer camp, where they immersed themself in songwriting, musical theater, joining rock bands, and eventually teaching. They taught their first music lessons when they were sixteen years old, and over the next five years became a much-beloved mainstay of the Buck’s Rock Music Shed. There, they arranged and directed the camp’s a cappella choir, led the songwriting club, taught private lessons in vocals and piano, accompanied campers in performances, and even found the inspiration for their vicious revenge tune, Michael.

Teddy graduated from Berklee College of Music in 2018 with a degree in Songwriting. While there, they studied closely with Americana artist Susan Cattaneo and singer-songwriter Livingston Taylor, who Teddy would later perform alongside at The Troubadour in Morristown, NJ in 2020. Teddy’s heartbreak ballad “Rhode Island Roads” was awarded Best Performance at the Berklee Perfect Pitch Contest in 2018 after a judge literally threw a pen across the room during deliberations.

Since relocating to NYC in 2019, Teddy has been giving private instruction in piano, vocals, and songwriting, mainly serving the Williamsburg/Bushwick/Ridgewood area. They adore meeting new students and discovering what methods of learning work best for that individual. Even better is when they see a person gain confidence in their playing, because of how that attitude can inform the way they interact with their world. Teddy encourages students to ask, “First, what went well? Now, what can I make better?” By analyzing their own performances and learning to appreciate their sound, players not only become better musicians, but more complete versions of themselves.

Teddy writes, records, and performs with their theatrical pop-rock band Teddy Hold On. In 2024 the group released their debut EP, Crying in Public, delivering both humorous and heavy stories with tight arrangements that showcase each band member’s talents. The EP explores themes of gender presentation and self expression, expectation versus reality, friendship breakups, and terrible coworkers.

Behind the scenes, Teddy also writes commercially, creating songs for special occasions and even video games. With their co-writer Max Lescohier, they wrote and arranged 17 folk songs that appear in the gameplay of 2023 PC title Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, performed by members of the San Fransisco Symphony choir. The unique, modular vocal arrangements they designed allow each of the tunes to be sung solo by a single player of any vocal part, or be joined in on with the harmonies of their co-op companions, in any combination of vocal parts. Teddy looks forward to expanding more fantastical worlds through their songwriting in the future.