Tracey Yarad

Australian-born, New York-based singer-songwriter and pianist Tracey Yarad has had an eclectic music career over the past three decades. She has recorded three CDs under her own name. She has toured Australia as a bandleader, opening (and sometimes singing backup) for multiple Australian and international rock bands—including mega group America—and appearing on national television.

Days of Our Lives star, Gloria Loving, hired her to play keys and sing backup in the 90s, singing duets with her, as well as putting her front and center singing her original song 'Raining in My Heart— already a Top 40 hit. She toured Europe as keyboardist leading her own jazz fusion group, appearing on Berlin television. And she spent seven years in the trenches as a house musician, singing and playing piano at 5-star Hiltons throughout Asia, saving enough money to open her own music school, which she ran for 18 years in the Blue Mountains of Australia.

Born in Taree, a small coastal town about 200 miles north of Sydney, Tracey grew up in a musical household, the child of talented amateur musicians who had stopped pursuing professional careers to devote themselves to their children. “Mum would still sing and play piano, at home. But Dad had sold his drum kit when my older sister came along and, although he was always very encouraging about my music, I think he imagined a more conventional life for me too,” she says.

Dad’s career advice notwithstanding, music remained front and center at home. Both parents were competitive jitterbug dancers and were nurturing and supportive of their daughter’s musical talent. She performed in local musical theatre from the age of 10, studied voice and classical piano as a child, and, at 16, after winning a Taree Eisteddfod vocal competition, was offered the opportunity to move to Sydney to study German Lieder at the NSW State Conservatorium High School. “My parents said I was too young,” says Tracey. However, after graduating from high school, she did go on to study German lieder and opera at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. “My father had said I could only leave home to study at the Conservatorium if I won a scholarship. And bingo! I won a scholarship.”

She had no idea of what she wanted to become but she felt a distinct (and continuing) affinity with German Lieder. So, it was something of an about turn when, following graduation, she formed the all-female rock group Maiden Oz and established herself as a rock singer and songwriter. “It was probably what I wanted to do all along,” she says. “And very freeing, after the rigors of studying opera.”

She later co-founded the well-known Sydney funk band, Groove City—with keyboardist Sam McNally, vocalists Dannielle Gaha (Jackson Browne, Ariana Grande), and Rick Price (Tina Arena), bassist Ian Lees (Moving Pictures), drummer Mitch Farmer (Dragon), and guitarist Ben Butler (Sting) opening for Australian stars Sharon O’Neill, Tommy Emmanuel, Marcia Hines, Darrel Braithwaite. Eddie Rayner (Split Enz) and Steve Kilby (The Church). “It was fun, but the income was too sporadic. You could work for three months on a tour and then have nothing for the rest of the year,” says Tracey, who supplemented her income with odd jobs and teaching. “But then we heard about the contracts in the 5-star hotels in Asia though other music friends, and they recommended us to the Hilton.”

There followed seven years of playing in the hotels across Japan and China. “It was hard leaving the creative musician life (only playing originals) to suddenly having to pander to audiences and bosses who demanded covers only,” she says. But she had a plan; earning enough money to buy a house and to open a school. “Opening my own school was a dream goal. I love teaching. I had taught in so many schools in Sydney and privately from home but I had a vision to create a community of musicians and to have a different spin on a school than what I’d seen. I had access to the top musicians in Australia and had plans to bring those people in and run workshops and weeklong camps. Not just teaching someone to play one-on-one, but putting kids together, creating bands and getting them off the streets. Changing lives.”

“That's what I achieved with the Blue Mountain School and I fully expected to do it forever,” says Tracey. But the cataclysmic breakdown of her 23-year marriage—on the heels of the shocking discovery of her husband’s affair with their godchild, who they had known since she was six—changed the whole direction of her life. In 2017, she pursued another long-held, previously withheld dream, to visit (and ultimately move) to New York City.

Arriving on an “extraordinary talent” visa, with one small bag of belongings, an Olympus camera and a cache of dreams, she immediately saturated herself in all the musical inspiration the city had to offer. Wherever there was great jazz—from the Stone to the 55 Bar—she was there, absorbing the music of young up-and-comers, such as Felix Pastorious and his Hipster Assassins, as well as established stars of the underground scene, Wayne Krantz and Dave Binney.

“I hadn’t planned on moving here,” says Yarad. “But each time I came back to visit, it got harder and harder to leave.” So when her friend and mentor, Grammy-nominated Latin jazz pianist Chano Dominguez, invited her to be his roommate, she knew she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to stay. “In New York, I was able to take lessons with my heroes and peers. The easy access to people blew my mind; they would never have toured down under and, if they had, there would have been no chance to meet them, let alone become friends and take lessons from them.”

In 2019 she starting working as the in-house photographer and web-designer for the Soapbox Gallery—one of the few venues to continue to livestream music seven nights a week throughout the pandemic. It led to a second career as an in-demand jazz photographer (her work has appeared in DownBeat, Guitar Player, and Drum Scene magazines) and videographer I SLIPPED IT IN HERE INSTEAD and introduced her to many of New York’s top musicians, including her recording band for All These Pretty Things, Jon Cowherd (who also produced), Tony Scherr (bass), Josh Dion (drums), Zach Brock (violin) and Luca Benedetti (guitar).

But above all else, Tracey is a musician, blessed with a soulful, incredibly beautiful instrument and a talent for composing heartfelt and evocative songs. Now focused on a solo career, she has produced multiple projects since relocating to New York City, performing at the 55 Bar, Cowgirl NYC and the Bitter End in the West Village, and at Pangea, where she held a weekly residency in the spring of 2023. Shows she has put on include ‘Philomena Rae,’ a celebration of the life of her mother, with Grammy-nominated Chilean vocal star Claudia Acuna, bassist Jennifer Vincent, flute Elsa Nilsson and drums Rosa Avila; a collaboration with fellow Australian musicians, MiG Ayesa, Nadia Ackerman and Karen Jacobsen, to raise funds for the Australian Bushfire wildlife fund; and a duo project with pianist Jim Ridl, ‘Lost in Translation.’ Featuring stories and songs from her days as a hotel singer in Japan, it got a heads-up in the New Yorker by Steve Futterman, who wrote, “If demanding experience leads to hard-won wisdom, Yarad and Ridl will have much to impart.”