Julie Spencer, Faculty

American composer and musician, Julie Spencer, is an internationally renowned virtuoso on her main instrument, marimba. She has appeared in concerts throughout Europe, North America, and Japan. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded her a jazz composition fellowship. In 2003, she was named one of the world’s 20 best young jazz vibraphonists by JazzIz magazine. Her music can be heard on more than a dozen CD releases.

Spencer is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and the California Institute of the Arts. She taught at the California Institute of the Arts from 1989 to 1993, and at the University of Michigan from 1995 to 1998. Between 1998 and 2003, she worked as a freelance percussionist in Portland, Oregon with the Oregon Symphony, Ballet, Opera, and new music festivals of the northwest. At the same time, she composed choral, chamber, and orchestral works. Together with her husband, composer/multi-instrumentalist Gernot Blume, Julie made an extensive tour of the U.S. in 2008 which included concerts with the jazz trio “Griot.” Two solo tours in the U.S. followed in 2009, as well as teaching at the International Katarzyna Mycka Marimba Academy IV in Frankfurt, Germany.

Julie’s marimba compositions are widely performed throughout the world. Her entire catalog of works is published by Norsk Musikforlag (Oslo, Norway). She was a member of the jury for the Japan Percussion Society’s marimba and percussion competition in Tokyo, and was commissioned by the organization to compose a marimba concerto with orchestra which was premiered in Warsaw, Poland in 2006. Julie has been a featured artist at numerous Percussive Arts Society International Conventions which have featured premieres of her music. Her trailblazing playing technique has been the subject of a dissertation by Eric Middleton at the University of Texas-Austin, “The Grateful Marimbist.”

In 2003, Spencer moved to Europe with Gernot Blume and their two children, and now lives in Bingen, Germany. She will be part of the Marimba 2010 Festival in the U.S., and will be returning to Japan in 2011 for residencies and concerts.