Projects

Contemporary Music:

Original compositions for marimba/vibraphone & piano/harp and other instruments

The influences in the scores produced by the composer couple include Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Alban Berg, Igor Strawinsky, Béla Bartók, Olivier Messiaen, Steve Reich and Sofia Gubaidulina. Spencer & Blume’s Gesamtkunstwerk is characterized by these influences and their extensive experiences with jazz, improvisation and world music cultures: from gamelan to Ravi Shankar, the music of Ghana to Salsa of the Caribbean. You can hear the world, filtered through the imagination of two individualistic, creative artists.

Jazz Duo Spencer-Blume

(CD “Changes Inside”)

In the formation of piano/vibraphone the two musicians perform original compositions in styles as diverse as bebop, swing, blues, Latin jazz and free jazz. Important influences in the realm of jazz are Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and the Ensemble Oregon. In the area of jazz improvisation the experiences of Julie Spencer and Gernot Blume with world music cultures and with contemporary Western art music can be heard and felt. Julie Spencer was named by the journal JazzIz as one of the twenty most noteworthy jazz vibraphonists of the young generation. Gernot Blume was the first musician/musicologist, who wrote a doctoral thesis on the jazz pianist Keith Jarrett.

The German jazz critic Joachim Ernst Berendt said about the work of the two in simple terms: “Wonderful music.”

World Music-Sound Collages

CDs “Out of the Stillness” & “Lost and Found”)

The two exceptional musicians present concerts at the crossroads of improvisation and composition on an assortment of most unusual instruments, from glass marimba to the Swedish nyckelharpa, the North Indian sitar, surbahar, tabla, percussion instruments from around the world, mandolin, guitar, harp, marimba, organ, harpsichord, voices etc.

This music is at once experimental and also traditional. It alludes to various world music cultures and combines them to shape a new, exceptional expressivity for the 21st century.

Julie Spencer & Gernot Blume perform classical North-Indian Ragas

(CD „Colors Of the Soul”)

The duo is part of a small community of Western musicians who have gained deep insight into the performance of Indian music, which undoubtedly counts as one of the world’s highly developed musical cultures, unique in its modal and rhythmic concepts. They studied this tradition with Swapan Chaudhuri, the world famous tabla virtuoso, as well as the Ravi Shankar-disciple Amiya Dasgupta at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles.

In their concerts they combine unusual arrangements of the old Raga melodies with informative explanations for the audience’s understanding of the music.

In dialogue with the audience they present the music not only through performance, but also by conveying the background and context of the music.

Common Ground: Julie Spencer & Gernot Blume cooperate with other musicians in the field of jazz/world music

(CD “Lost and Found”)

In varying formations and with different guest musicians Spencer & Blume appear under the ensemble name Common Ground.

Among the musicians, with whom the two have performed their compositions in concert projects are: Pedro Eustache, Dan Morris, Glen Moore, Poovalur Srinivasn, Ed Sarath, Ruben Alvarez, Craig Williams, John Bergamo, John Gross.

Literature project: "Now where?" - new settings of poems by Heinrich Heine

(CD “Jetzt wohin - Heine songs”)

This full length evening program was developed at the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the great German poet’s death in 2006. The program consists of new settings of 17 poems by Heinrich Heine. The songs cover the scope of Heine’s poetry from love poetry to political commentary, from romantic to ideological, from love of life to suffering of death, from sensitivity to bitter irony. Poems like “Deutschland ein Wintermärchen”, “Die schlesischen Weber” and “Nachtgedanken” are part of the program, as well as “Sie erlischt”, “Ich hab im Traum geweinet” or “Das Fräulein stand am Meere.”

The musical rendition encompasses styles from folk to pop song, art song, sound collage and atonal music. The instrumentation includes piano, mandolin, guitar, violin, harp, percussion, vibraphone and the voices of the two artists. With this program Spencer & Blume convey the timelessness of Heine’s poetry and combine their own musicality with the expressiveness of the literary word.

The program is especially suitable for schools, cultural centers, small stages, and literary-musical event series.

Asavari - Painters of Sound

Multicultural Cross-Over World-Music-Ensemble

Asavari is the Indian term for a scale, that corresponds to our Western minor scale and can be found in similar form in all those musical cultures of the world, where music theory is based on the principles of modes and scales. For the newly founded ensemble ASAVARI this means:

four continents and cultures meet, four different personalities, whose life paths have come together from the farthest corners of the globe, four biographies, that are characterized by the search for new horizons, four musicians, who have perfected their art with the respective masters of their diverse musical languages of various world cultures, and who themselves have passed on as teachers their treasures of experiences at music conservatories and music centres all over the world.

Four individualistic, internationally experienced virtuoso artists, all of them soloists, composers, and routine ensemble musicians join in a multicultural cross-over world music ensemble to create a unique and moving sound spectacle at the intersection of most varied aesthetic foundations: a fascinating and precious world music fusion.

Asavari, that means: The synthesis of modal improvisational structures of the ancient Persian music tradition with folkloristic sounds from the Mongolian prairies, poured over and spiced with harmonies from the musical languages of the Western world.

Asavari, that means, pulsating potential, musical maturity and subtlety, communication across cultural and religious delineations, expressiveness and beauty, musical citizenship of the world, music that points toward the future, common language and the shaping of intercultural cooperation in the global village.

Ensemble Asavari - Painters of Sound, are:

Gernot Blume, Multi-instrumentalist and world music expert from Germany, he represents through his virtuoso sound magic on piano, harp, mandolin, accordion, keyed fiddle, flutes, Indian sitar and other instruments in connection with his multi-stylistic know-how in folk, world music, jazz, and new music, the global spectrum, the basis for the cooperation of the ensemble Asavari.

Enkhjargal Dandarvaanchig, voice miracle from Mongolia, musically travels between cultures. He plays the traditional Mongolian horse-head-fiddle 'Morin Khoor' and champions in highest perfection the characteristic under- and overtone singing 'Harhiraa and Höömii.' Enthusiastically he melts his traditional roots with modern, Western influenced music and improvisation.

Jamal Samavati, born in Iran, is the disciple and successor of Mohammed Reza Lotfi, who is named as a grand master of Persian music and a treasure of the music world. Samavati himself is a virtuoso of this oriental art music tradition and counts as one of the best Tar- and Setar soloists of the present. Besides imitating vocal qualities, he makes human emotion audible and tangible with the long necked lute Tar.

Julie Spencer, American exceptional artist and marimba virtuoso, she enchants with her unusual percussion instruments and her profoundly personal vocal style. Her expertise in the areas of jazz, classical and contemporary Western music as well as world music from India, Africa, and Indonesia, unmistakably join together in the music.