Tracy Moresby

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 795, 15 October 1954, Page 25

Tracy Moresby

"TRACY MORESBY is well known as an organist, music teacher and com- | poser. Many of -his songs have been | broadcast by local and overseas artists, |}and his works for violin and piano and ) organ have been publicly performed. He was born in Auckland, where he has | lived all his life, apart from early school|days in Paeroa and four years’ service | with the New Zealand Medical Corps in the Middle East. He began music |studies under his mother’s _ tuition '"almost as soon as I could talk," and | studied later at the Paeroa convent. But | when he returned to Auckland at 14 he | completed his L.R.S.M. diploma without tuition. Although he later gained his | Mus. Bach, degree at Auckland Univer- | sity College, and although he has sub- | mitted work to the Royal Academy for‘ comment-and been encouraged to carry 'on-he is largely self-taught as a com_poser. "In the days when I was most | needing help," he says, "there was no | such thing as a bursary. One either sank |or swam alone." Tracy Moresby is now a teacher of |/music at King’s School, Remuera, and he teaches privately as well. A Piano Sonatina of his was included in, the Auckland Lyric Harmonists’ New Zealand Composers Concert last year, and this year his Sonatina for Violin and Piano was broadcast in the New Zealand Composers Concert presented by the Christchurch Civic Music Council. It

was awarded second prize as well in a competition conducted by the Countil for a new work by a local composer, Tracy Moresby’s church music has lately been performed by the Christchurch Cathedral Choir, and to commemorate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II he composed a special Paean for organ. This work, played by C. Foster Browne, can be heard in the fourth programme of Music by New Zealand Composers. In the fifteenth programme in the series Olga Burton (soprano) sings three songs by Tracy Moresby, with the composer at the piano.