Vocalist

Women in Jazz & World Music Concert
Women in Jazz and World Music (WJWM) is a free concert / recital led by Dee Spencer on keyboards with Jewell McMillon on bass, Jay Hernandez on drums and Michelle Jacques as Mistress of Choirs!

Women in Jazz Students with the Dee Spencer Trio & Michelle Jacques

Community Music Center

To conclude this year's Festival -- on what is Mother’s Day, come laugh, sway and sip with two of the nation’s greatest authorities on the extraordinarily diverse American Songbook - Jason Brock & Dee Spencer. The special cabaret has been curated with favorites from songwriters such as George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Rogers & Hart, while sharing stories of the legendary LGBTQ+ performers who brought these songs to life over the years. More contemporary songs from the 1980s and 1990s will also be included to create a deliciously fun and unmistakably queer event. Brock and Spencer’s fabulous chemistry will bring the deep musicality, lived experiences, and fierce storytelling of legendary artists to life. This is the perfect Mother’s Day gift!

Brock & Spencer

Chan National Queer Arts Center

The bluesFem Project: SMILE ORANGE is a musical experience arranged and directed by Bay Area jazz luminary, Dee Spencer, combining the 1976 film Smile Orange with a live performance of the soundtrack composed by trombonist Melba Liston. Spencer’s arrangement combines soul, R&B, jazz, pop and blues with traditional Jamaican sounds and pays homage to two great artists: Author Trevor D. Rhone (1940–2009) and Melba Liston (1926–1999). Sketches of the original scores are archived at the Center for Black Music Research (CBMR) at Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois, where Spencer accessed Liston’s manuscripts. Previously, Spencer was a member of a group of four researchers called the Melba Liston Collective and served as Liston’s music copyist in NYC in the summer of 1982. Smile Orange is a satirical farce about the daily lives of native Jamaicans working in the tourism industry. Rhone’s title is embedded in Jamaican tradition and mythology. Inside this slapstick comedy is commentary about the social conditions of the Jamaican workforce with sharp comparisons to slavery. The characters of Smile Orange, who work at the fictitious Mondo Beach Hotel, must use their “smiles” as tools for survival. According to a myth dating back to the slave trade period, eating oranges causes sterility. The orange growers used this to preserve the crop. Interestingly, oranges are enjoyed by everyone throughout the film.

Vocalist

Dee Spencer

Events

Past events

May 1, 2026

Women in Jazz Students with the Dee Spencer Trio & Michelle Jacques · San Francisco International Arts Festival

May 11, 2025

Brock & Spencer · San Francisco International Arts Festival

About

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