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Osobisty profil

Award winning composer and performer Demetrius Spaneas travels the world as a musical ambassador, connecting classical, jazz, and traditional music throughout the US, Eastern Europe, and Asia to create international dialogue through artistic collaboration. He has been featured soloist and composer at major concert venues and international festivals in the three continents. In demand as a composer, performer and guest lecturer, Spaneas has been a guest of Harvard University, California Institute of the Arts, Tanglewood, New England Conservatory, American University of Bulgaria (Blagoevgrad), University of the Arts (Belgrade, Serbia), the Xenakis Center for Creative Research (Athens, Greece), Beethovenhaus (Bonn, Germany), Uzbekistan State Conservatory, Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) College of Music, Mikhail Chemyakin Foundation (St. Petersburg, Russia), Dnipropetrovsk Conservatory (Ukraine) the Latvian Academy of Music (Riga), the National Conservatory of Tajikistan, the Baku (Azerbaijan) Music Academy, the Piaget Institute (Portugal), and many others. He has presented numerous talks and concerts for the US State Department in Moscow and St. Petersburg as part of the American Centers program, and has received grants from the US State Department and the Fulbright/Hayes Act to present his music and lectures on composition and performance throughout the former Soviet Union. He has also received a special certificate from the Russian Duma (senate) for enriching the cultural life of St. Petersburg, and a certificate from the US State Department for promoting American music abroad. He is a Fulbright Scholar Specialist in American Studies, Music, and received his first Fulbright grant to teach jazz studies, composition, and music business in Dushanbe, Tajikistan in summer 2013. He has been a featured artist at many domestic and international festivals, including the Apositsia Forum (St. Petersburg, Russia), BEMUS (Belgrade, Serbia), Detroit Jazz Festival (USA), Dushanbe International Jazz Festival (Dushanbe, Tajikistan), Long Arms Festival (Moscow, Russia), Mozartiana (Gdansk, Poland), Musicacoustica (Beijing, China), Omnibus Black Box Music and Vision Festival (Tashkent, Uzbekistan), the Syracuse Jazz Festival (USA), and many others. As a composer he was won awards from ASCAP, Meet The Composer, and the American Music Center, and was the New York City Con Edison/Exploring the Metropolis Composer-in-Residence. as well as Composer-in-Residence for the Bay Area Chamber symphony. Growing up listening to Rock, Soul, and classic R&B music, Demetrius feels very fortunate to have performed with some of his musical heroes, the greats of American music, including: Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Denise Williams, James Ingraham, Dionne Warwick, and many, many others, including being the saxophonist for Motown’s famous Funk Brothers. He currently has two solo recordings on Capstone Records, When Wind Comes to Sparse Bamboo (2003) and From a Far-off World (2006), both of which will be rereleased by the Naxos Online Library. In 2010 he released Sfumato, a collection of improvisations with vocalist Galina Parfenova under his own label, DSM, with which he has released a number of singles in recent years. A dedicated teacher, Mr. Spaneas maintains a vibrant teaching studio both in Boston, MA and online, as well as directing the Suffolk University Jazz Ensemble. He teaches private lessons in classical and jazz performance, composition, orchestration, and arranging. His teaching methods were featured in an interview in the March 2013 issue of Jazz Inside magazine. Mr. Spaneas, a Boston-based artist, is a native of Lowell, MA and holds both bachelor and master of music degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music where he studied classical and jazz performance, composition, and world music.

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