Tracy has worked as a choir conductor, arranger and composer, and artistic director for a large-scale knitting project about Climate Change. These projects have been about climate change and sustainability, social justice, feminism or other important issues.
The Climate Choir
Tracy was Artistic Director of the Climate Choir project (2017), for SEAM Inc (Sustainable Environment Arts Movement), which was made up of over 20 choirs from Brisbane, Sydney, Bungendore, Canberra, Melbourne, Ballarat, Mt Gambier and Hobart who were united in their commitment to reducing the impact of climate change and living more sustainably. The choir sang on the eve of the United Nations Climate Conference in Bonn, Germany as our way of sending a message to world leaders that we wanted them to be courageous as they negotiate global agreements on carbon emissions and other strategies to reduce the human impact on our planet. Our songs call out to all people to do everything we can to leave the world in a healthy state for future generations.
Things that Fall Over
In 2014 Tracy was choir leader and performer in TTFO (Things That Fall Over), a project about the creativity of older women (among other things) with a script by Peta Murray and music by Peta Williams.
Dust
Tracy was Musical Director for Dust (2013), written and directed by Donna Jackson (Hubcap), with songs composed by Mark Seymour (Hunters and Collectors) and choral arrangements by Tracy. This production toured to Adelaide in April this year where she worked with the fabulous Born on Monday Choir. The show was reviewed by Glam Adelaide:
I found (the music) most engaging. Musically these are not trite songs. They are carefully composed pieces that contain some very fine vocal harmonies, (with) references to Phillip Glass and to Arvo Part.
WARM
Tracy was co-artistic director of WARM, with Lisa Kendal, a large-scale fibre art project that engaged with over 250 community knitters from around Australia and overseas to create an artwork made from over 1100 individual knitted patterns, to create a large scale fibre work that envisaged a future landscape without coal. The project was an initiative of SEAM Inc (Sustainable Environmental Arts Movement), and organisation that was set up by Tracy and Lisa to engage communities with the importance of climate change and the value of making art together. WARM was originally exhibited in the Ballarat Art Gallery. and has now found its home in the Wool Museum in Geelong.
From March to end of August 2016, knitters created hundreds of pieces including gum leaves, trees, native flowers, wind turbines and knitted squares. During several days of installation, these knitted pieces were assembled over a picture of a coal mine to create a second image of the renewed landscape – like an enormous collage.
WARM was inspired by Frank, a sheep farmer who had just sold the farm that had been in his family for five generations. As someone who worked on the land every day, he had seen the effect of a changing climate; but Frank had noticed another change over time:
“The problem is we’ve become so dependent on fossil fuels to keep warm, we’ve forgotten how to warm ourselves with wool.”
After listening to Frank’s story, we wanted to create a project that celebrated the beauty and practicality of wool as a way to keep warm. We wanted this project to make a strong and arresting statement about the redundancy of fossil fuels as an energy source.