Tracey Rush [ b. 1955 ] is founder and Executive Director of the Northeast Iowa School of Music in Dubuque, Iowa. She holds and MME and has taught music at Northeast Iowa Community College and in the Dubuque Community School District. In 1998, she formed the Dubuque Community String Orchestra for adults which she still conducts.
As Composer-in-Residence of the Dubuque Symphony’s 1996-97 season, the DSO commissioned “Spirit of Freedom,” a rousing concert fanfare which was chosen to be performed at the MENC 56th National In-service, April, 1998, in Phoenix, Arizona. The Owensboro Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Nicholas Palmer, performed “Spirit of Freedom” at the Kentucky governor’s inaugural in December, 1999. “Angels in the Snow” for choir, children’s choir and orchestra, was commissioned and premiered by Kirk Trevor and the Knoxville (Tennessee) Symphony Orchestra in 1998. It received performances by the Pittsburgh Symphony in 1999, and the Naples Philharmonic in 2001, under the direction of Erich Kunzel.
The musical-comedy review, “Mothering Heights,” which Rush co-wrote with Des Moines playwright Rebecca Christian, is now published by Dramatic Publishing in 2001, and the pair collaborated on a second musical, “A Piece of Cake,” which premiered in Wisconsin and Iowa in the fall of 2003. Her song-cycle for treble choir, “The Butterfly Garden,” with texts by elementary students, won the 1999 Francis J. Pyle Commission Award, sponsored by the Iowa Composers Forum.
Tracey has been a finalist in the Continental Harmony Project and Faith Partners Commissions of the American Composers Forum. She is former principal violist with the Dubuque Symphony and served 4 years on the board of the Dubuque Arts Council Artists in Residence. She was elected to four terms as Chair of the Iowa Composers Forum. Her other professional affiliations include the American String Teachers Association, Music Educators National Conference, Kato Havas Association for the New Approach, American Viola Society, the Iowa Viola Society, the Conductors Guild, and ASCAP.
She received her BS in Music Education from Bob Jones University where she studied with Dwight Gustafson, is completing her MME from the University of Northern Iowa, and is working on a certificate in Arts Administration from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst. She is also the owner of Fountain Park Music Publishing. A native of Milwaukee, Tracey lives in Dubuque where she and her husband raised two sons.
Biography and photo from http://www.wendelmusic.com/rush.html
