A dedicated musical collaborator and insightful soloist, Jamie Balmer has worked for over a decade with Orpheus Guitar Duo — a group lauded as "brilliant and wild thinking artists," and "among the premiere ensembles that is defining 21st-century performance practice." Jamie has made several critically acclaimed recordings with Orpheus Guitar Duo. Among these are 2012’s I sing the body electric, praised by one reviewer as “a milestone record” and featuring world-premiere arrangements of music by Cage, Satie, Silvestrov, Mompou, and Arvo Pärt, with the latter composer collaborating in the arrangement of his Spiegel im Spiegel for two electric guitars. Jamie has premiered new works for guitar duo by Joel Roston, Joseph Ricker, and Thomas Schuttenhelm, and he teamed up with kinetic sculptor Arthur Ganson on the 2011 multimedia performance installation Machines. Jamie has also performed with clarinetist Ismail Akmuradov, archguitarist Peter Blanchette, and dancer/choreographer Ilya Vidrin. These wide-ranging collaborative experiences have provided an important creative complement to Jamie’s work as a guitar soloist.

A graduate of Hampshire College, where he received the Alan Garely scholarship, Jamie's studies with Phillip de Fremery - a student of Andrés Segovia and devoted curator of his legacy - remain a wellspring of inspiration for his work as a musician. That work incorporates teaching as a corollary to performance, and Jamie has given music workshops and masterclasses at Mt. Vernon Nazarene University, Endicott College, Stratford Academy, Shippensburg University, and the Annapolis Key School. He maintains a large teaching studio in greater Boston.