Artist celebrates career anniversary and birthday With A Musical performance

Tracye Eileen, R&B and smooth jazz singer, has opened for recording artists, including Babyface, Chante Moore and Buddy Guy. Photo provided by Vanessa Abron of Abron Agency.
Tracye Eileen, R&B and smooth jazz singer, has opened for recording artists, including Babyface, Chante Moore and Buddy Guy. Photo provided by Vanessa Abron of Abron Agency.

 Artist Celebrates Career Anniversary And Birthday With A Musical Performance

BY DEMARCO TRAMMELL

R&B and smooth jazz artist Tracye Eileen will celebrate her 10th anniversary as a music professional and her 60th birthday on Sunday,
Nov. 14th, at 5 p.m., with the birthday celebration, and the performance at 5:30 p.m. at Buddy Guy’s Legends, located at 700 South Wabash Ave.
Throughout her illustrious career, she has accumulated constant rotations on smooth jazz radio stations and has opened for major recording
artists including Babyface, Chante Moore and Buddy Guy.

Eileen musical career can be traced back to her first performance when she was eight years old. “I was in a third-grade play, it was the “Wizard of Oz” and I was trying to audition for the role of Dorothy, but I was so shy. I just couldn’t speak loud enough in the audition, but when I sang I just kind
of blew everybody away. My teacher even had me come to her house with my grandmother to practice the lines in the basement, but at school I just couldn’t do it. So what they decided to do is was three casts, they rewrote the play so that I could just sing in all three casts. They had Dorothy go
to sleep and I came in as the fairy godmother so that was kind of the beginning of how significant music was to me.”

From there, she went on to sing in her high school jazz band, church choir,
and her college jazz band, the Jackson State University singers. Her original goal was to get her degree, her Master of Business Administration,
work for CBS Records and get discovered by somebody in the studio. When that didn’t happen, she continued to sing, travelling to Switzerland
with her church, and performing at weddings and funerals. After her second
divorce, Eileen decided she was going to focus on her music career.

She’s been also singing with her women’s chorus for more than 30 years but was briefly interrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to her, the pandemic wasn’t a bad thing at all. “That wasn’t a negative
for me actually, it interrupted me as far as singing in the choir because I had taken a leave because I was so busy with my day job and running the music business and performing. I couldn’t make my women’s chorus rehearsal commitments, so I had just actually worked it back in and had been going back for a few months before the church got shut down due to COVID, since then I’ve actually came back in and sang a solo and online as well.”

Eileen has also traveled around the City of Chicago. She grew up in Chatham, and lived in Hyde Park, South Loop, Streeterville, and South Shore. She says her Chicago roots have definitely impacted her music. “I think it definitely influences the kind of music that I like. I have amazing Chicago- based musicians, they’re all from Chicago, I think Chicago is special, in the type of music and musicians, and producers. We
have a long history in that as you know.”

In terms of her performance on November 14th, Eileen said it’s not only a
performance, but it’s also a birthday celebration. “It’s just celebrating this 10-year journey as a professional artist, so there will be a video piece that recaps and shows a lot of pictures of how things have been over these past 10 years.”

She also said that there will be a special guest who will perform as well, she wouldn’t reveal the name, but she said this artist had just recently retired and is the echelon of greats like Michael Jackson and Beyonce.

To purchase tickets to the event, visit https://tenyearsoftracyeeileen.
eventbrite. com. For more information on Tracye Eileen, visit www.
tracyeeileen.com.

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