About Julie Spencer
American composer and musician Julie Spencer crosses stylistic and cultural boundaries. She connects East and West from the center of Europe and follows the romantic tradition to open doors for a modern synthesis of the arts in her work as composer, performing musician, and painter.
Spencer’s works are being played throughout the world – from Los Angeles via Peking and Tokyo to Warsaw and back to Bingen. Her music is asked for with international commissions and awarded with grants for example from the United States National Endowment for the Arts.
Her compositions and arrangements have been premiered in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella New Chamber Music Series in the Japan American Theater and the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion in L.A. with the Glendale Symphony under the baton of Lalo Schifrin as well as in concert halls, conservatories, and international festivals in Berlin, Osaka, Peking, Washington D.C., and Atlanta. Her first concerto for marimba and orchestra was premiered in Japan with chamber ensemble and with full orchestra in Warsaw, Poland in 2006. Ensemble and orchestra works followed worldwide, and 2017 her most recent orchestral work in Zhongshan Hall, Taipei, Taiwan with Yu An Chang, Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducting the Taipei Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, with commissioning soloist Wei Chen Lin of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.
Many multi-ethnic projects are co-composed with other collaborative artists, including Ethiopian German singer Menna Mulugeta, and multi-instrumentalist and composer Gernot Blume.
As an internationally renowned marimba virtuoso Spencer has appeared in concerts throughout Europe, North America, and East Asia.
Spencer has had jazz and world music ensembles with artists from Venezuela, Mongolia, Iran, Brazil, India, Australia, Japan, the US, and Germany. Based in Germany Spencer has been part of the faculty on numerous Zeltsman ZMF festivals, US Percussion Camps, KoSA, the Mycka IKMMA festival, and adjudicator at various competitions such as the Japan Percussion Society solo mallet competition in Tokyo.
In the United States, she was adjunct faculty at the California Institute of the Arts and at the University of Michigan. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, and recipient, post graduation, of the Performer’s Certificate, Spencer’s master’s degree is from Cal Arts. Her music can be heard on more than 20 CD releases of pop, jazz, contemporary, world music, and chamber percussion by solo artists and chamber ensembles from Canada, Japan, Germany, and the US, such as Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra co-principle trombonist, Hiroshi Tanaka’s “Walking On Air” CD recording with “Lights of Love Concerto for Trombone” with piano.
Also a prize winning visual artist with numerous exhibits, Spencer has works in private collections in Japan, the U.S., Germany, and Norway. Based in Germany, Spencer’s art is featured by Norsk Musikforlag on the covers of her scores and Blume’s scores and on CD covers of other artists, such as Japanese percussion and flute duo, Shiori Tanaka and Kazuko Ihara’,“Voices for Peace.” Spencer plays Bergerault / Dynasty Marimbas, Mike Balter Mallets, MalletKat, and is published by Norsk Musikforlag.
