Patricia Nicholson Parker is interviewed.

Patricia Nicholson Parker has been an indefatigable organizing spirit in New York City’s artistic community centered on the Lower East Side since 1981, when she directed and helped to organize “A Thousand Cranes Peace Opera,” for the opening of the UN Special Sessions on Disarmament. After working with bassists Peter Kowald and William Parker to help organize the ground-breaking artist-run Sound Unity Festivals in 1984 and 1988, Nicholson Parker successfully initiated and coordinated the Improvisers Collective, which ran from 1993 till 1995. The success of the Collective suggested the idea for the now globally famous Vision Festival. In 1995 she founded Arts for Art, which has successfully presented twelve Vision Festivals, and latterly a dance/music series, the Vision Collaboration Festival and a weekly Vision Club series.