Jill Tracy is a composer, singer, pianist, storyteller and "musical evocateur" based in San Francisco.
Known for her dark, evocative, cinematic style, Jill Tracy states that some of her biggest childhood influences were film score composers such as Bernard Herrmann, and classic suspense tales, including Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang films, Ray Bradbury stories, and Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. In an interview, she stated, "I learned from watching 'The Twilight Zone' that often it was what you didn’t see that really put the fear in you... How a story could evoke such emotion and response essentially revealing so little. I abide by that in my approach to music. It’s the breath, the spaces between the notes and the arrangements that make the work come alive. The Soul lives in the silence."
She thinks of her music as a portal, a "way-in" and calls this seductive and magical place she inhabits the "elegant side of the netherworld."
LA Weekly describes her work: "Think of Jill Tracy’s music as the soundtrack for Union Station filmed in black and white during the eerie build-up to a startlingly romantic plot twist. She has a voice that prompts images of spirits haunting art deco hallways and a knack for writing songs that unfold like the story lines of F.W. Murnau movies that were never made."
Jill Tracy is listed in San Francisco Magazine's Top 100 Creative Forces in the Bay Area, has been awarded "Best of the Bay" by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and has been nominated for two California Music Awards and SF Weekly Music Awards.
She has been hailed a "bad-ass icon" by SFist and "a femme fatale for the thinking man" by the San Francisco Chronicle, which is a moniker that is now frequently used to describe her.
“My life’s work has always been about honoring the Mystery, the forgotten—those stories and places lost through Time," she explains. "It’s vital to preserve a sense of marvel and wonder now in a world trying its best to destroy, mock, or debunk it. It’s my purpose to be a beacon, a tether to these places. And the greatest thing I can do is to transport my audience there with me—just by listening."