a nonprofit presenter of jazz artistic and education programs

Dr. Dianthe “Dee” Spencer, Director of the SFJAZZ All-Star High School Ensembles, is also Co-Director of the Jazz and World Music Studies Program and professor at San Francisco State University, where she founded the jazz studies degree program. She earned an Ed.D. from the University of San Francisco; M.M. in Music Composition from Washington University, St. Louis; and a B.S. in Music Education from Florida A&M University. Her teaching background includes assistant professorships at Berklee College of Music; Darmouth College; Simmons College; and University of Massachusetts-Boston. In the program’s first two years, Spencer conducted the award-winning Big Band at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington Competition in New York (2002, 2003). She has also served as Director of the GRAMMY National High School Jazz Combo.

Spencer has served on the executive boards of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE), the San Francisco Chapter of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), and currently serves on the boards of the Stanford Jazz Workshop and the Community Music Center, San Francisco. She was recognized by IAJE for "Outstanding Contributions to Jazz Education" (1986, 1989, 1990, 1994, and 1995). Spencer has also served as Co-Director of the Clifford Brown/Stan Getz All-Stars Scholarship performance program for the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts (NFAA).

Committed to jazz education, Spencer is also a consummate performer. She has taught and performed on four continents, including seven Baltic countries, and as a keyboardist, pianist, composer, arranger and vocalist, she has worked with Branford Marsalis, John Handy, Bobby McFerrin, among many others. Her debut CD, Vintage School, was released in 2002 at the Dresden Jazz Festival in Dresden, Germany.