CCi Artists

Demetrius Spaneas

Multi-wind soloist/composer/recording artist Demetrius Spaneas leads a varied international career. As a performer he has worked with top artists across all disciplines, ranging from John Cage to Gunther Schuller to Ray Charles to the Funk Brothers to European classical artists and traditional musicians from Central Asia. He currently has two solo recordings on Capstone Records, When Wind Comes to Sparse Bamboo (2003) and From a Far-off World (2006), and is in the process of preparing two new solo recordings for release within the year. As a composer, Spaneas’ major interests have included combining improvisation within classically structured forms, with electronics and video, and world music. His music has been performed at major venues and festivals throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.
In demand as a performer, composer, conductor, 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 (Tashkent, Uzbekistan), Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) College of Music, Mikhail Chemyakin Foundation (St. Petersburg, Russia), Dnipropetrovsk Conservatory (Ukraine) the Latvian Academy of Music (Riga), and many others. He has also 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 throughout the CIS. He has been awarded a Meet The Composer Global Connections Grant to be Composer-in-Residence and featured soloist at the 2009 Black Box Music and Vision Festival in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In Fall 2009, he will be guest soloist and composer at the Musicacoustica Festival in Beijing, China.
He is also the founder and leader of the world music ensemble BALKANASIA, which combines music from the Balkans and Near East with jazz and rock, and the co-director of the New York based chamber group the Sapphire Ensemble. He plays exclusively on Gonzales Reeds on clarinet and saxophone. He is the cover story for the July/August 2008 issue of Saxophone Journal.
Currently, Spaneas is Composer-in-Residence with the Bay Area Chamber Symphony (CA), and the Music Director of the International Symposium of Contemporary Arts and Humanities, based in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Athens, Greece.

www.dspaneas.com


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Last Update 10/8/2009