After growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, she earned music degrees from Vassar College and the University of California, San Diego.
[5] Her teachers included Robert Erickson, Kenneth Galburo, Gustav Leonhardt, Josef Mars, John Metz, Wilbur Ogdon, Wallingford Riegger, and Roslyn Tureck.
[5] Spizizen created free lunchtime concert series in public venues such as shopping malls in San Diego and Tucson.
She formed the Arizona Early Music Society and served as its president, and co-founded the Basically Baroque Symposium at the University of California San Diego.
[5][11] She received two commissions from the Westport Madrigal Singers, as well as a prize from Vassar College for her 1946 dance score/musical comedy, Sweep It Clean.