Featured AAC Artist Series: Tony Spencer

Featured AAC Artist Series: Tony Spencer

The Arts Council Virtual Art Gallery Series Featuring AAC Artist: Tony Spencer

Tony Jerome Spencer was born, raised, and educated in Anne Arundel County. While attending Northeast Senior High School in Pasadena, Maryland, he developed a love for creating visual art.

Two years after graduating from Northeast High School, Spencer became a member of the United States Marine Corps, from 1971-1973, where he served as a Presidential Honor Guard in Washington, DC and later as a docent and sentry at the United States Naval Academy and Naval Base in Annapolis, Maryland.
In 1974, he joined the Annapolis Fire Department and became the first certified African American Paramedic, Arson Investigator, and later the department’s first Maryland Certified Public Information Officer. Tony also served as faculty at the University of Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute in College Park, Maryland. Spencer was also one of four Annapolitans to carry the Olympic Torch during the 1996 International Olympic Games.

He obtained both a Bachelor of Arts (1997) and Master’s in Public Administration degrees (2011) from Sojourner/Douglass College in Baltimore, Maryland.

Tony is also a performing and vocal recording artist, composer, a poet, a model, and a storyteller. He is the founder of A. J. Spencer Consultants, LLC, Enrapture Records and manages a performing artist career which has included appearances with the Jimmy Smith Trio, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, War, The Soul Stirrers, The Dixie Humming Birds, The Mighty Clouds of Joy, James Cleveland, and Shirley Caesar; participated in the music ministry for the Fishnet Festival with Larry & Bobbi Andes (1986-90), where he sang with “Joy Ministries” and shared in ministry with BeBe & CeCe Winans, Larnelle Harris, Amy Grant, Bill Gaither, Carmen, Jesse Dixon, Twila Paris, Marlon Le Fevor, Michael W. Smith, and many others.

Spencer has also sung with various entities locally and internationally including Dr. J. Ernest Green and the Annapolis Chorale, The Calgary Alberta Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra in Tampa. In Alba, Italy, Tony performed the Mozart, Motown and More Concert with Stefan Scaggiari, John Starr, Sue Matthews, Frank Russo, Brian Ganz and other international artists at the 2003 Saluzzo Spring Festival, accompanied by St. Mary’s College singers and musicians. In February ‘06’ Tony accompanied pianist Stefan Scaggiari to Stef’’s hometown of Evansville, Indiana, to perform the Mozart, Motown and More concert with the Evansville Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra.

Along with his poetic, visual and vocal gifts, Tony is a freelance model and has performed in local and regional theater: Working, Celebrations, The Lion and Fox, The Meeting with Kevin McClavain and Greg Alan Williams of Bay Watch, Remember the Titans, Finian’s Rainbow, with Dr. J. Ernest Green, and recently, Emancipation Revisited, and Emancipation Continues: War & Peace, written and directed by Dr. Vivian Gist Spencer, in association with the Northern Arundel Cultural Preservation Society (NACPS).

Website:
The Art of Tony Jerome Spencer

Follow Tony on Instagram:
tonyj.spencer

Please contact Tony for any purchase inquiries:
[email protected]