Cellist Trace Johnson is a musician from Madison, Wisconsin. Trace has appeared as a chamber musician, soloist, and orchestral musician in a wide variety of ensembles and settings around the world. Equally at home teaching in the studio or performing on stage, Trace is a devoted and thoughtful communicator who enjoys a varied career as a cellist, teacher, and musician.
Trace has won several symphony orchestra auditions. In 2017, Trace won a section cello position with the Southwest Florida Symphony Orchestra in Fort Myers, Florida and, one year later in 2018, a section position at the Sarasota Orchestra in Sarasota, Florida. Recently in 2023, Trace won a section cello position with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and the Madison Symphony Orchestra in Madison, Wisconsin. Trace has also recently appeared with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and the Artosphere Festival Orchestra in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
As a chamber performer, Trace has appeared in recitals with faculty from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Eastman School of Music, New England Conservatory of Music, University of California: Los Angeles, The Juilliard School, Rice University, The Colburn School, University of Toronto, Florida Atlantic University, Lynn Conservatory in Boca Raton, Florida, Palm Beach Atlantic University, Florida International University, Shenandoah University, Queens College in New York City, SUNY Purchase University, Mannes School of Music, and the University of Michigan-Lansing. Trace has had recent chamber collaborations with members of the Willy Street Chamber Players, Bach Dancing Dynamite Society, and LunArts Festival in Madison, Wisconsin and in Fairhope, Alabama at the Eastern Shore Chamber Music Festival.
In addition to his orchestral and chamber performance work, Trace has also worked as a composer, arranger, and recording instrumentalist. In May 2015, Trace successfully auditioned into the Canadian touring string-rock octet, Barrage8. Trace performed internationally in Europe, Canada, and across the United States for eight months and performed the Barrage8 show more than seventy times both in solo and collaborative outreach contexts. In early spring 2016, Trace recorded the complete tutti and solo cello parts for the Barrage8 2015-16 Tour Release. In 2017, Trace co-wrote music that appeared in the Wisconsin indie short film, Christmas Trees. Christmas Trees, shot and directed by videographer Jack Whaley, debuted at the Wisconsin Film Festival at Sundance Theatres in Madison, Wisconsin. In 2020, Trace composed and recorded original music for the Wisconsin short film, One Foot In, which made it’s debut in the Wisconsin Film Festival that year as well. One Foot In featured veteran actors from Wisconsin’s own American Players Theatre and raised over fifty-thousand dollars with it’s crowdfunding campaign leading up to the production of the short film. Trace recorded and composed original music for the virtual-reading release of New York-based author Mark Belaire’s newest publication, Stonehaven, in the fall of 2020. Trace is currently working on original music for the second installment of Mark’s narrative, Edgewood, which will be published in the spring of 2023.
During the pandemic, Trace produced recordings for Master Chorale of South Florida in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Sarasota Orchestra in Sarasota, Florida, Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society and the Madison New Music Festival in Madison, Wisconsin. In November 2020, Trace recorded solo cello work, All the Pretty Little Horses, by Wisconsin-based composer Laura Schwendinger at Oktaven Studios in Hoboken, New Jersey; the unaccompanied cello work will be included on an Albany Records release in the near future. In August 2021, Trace produced recordings from two contemporary solo recitals recorded live at the Arts + Literature Laboratory in Madison, WI in early August 2021. At the A+LL recitals, Trace performed works by Osvaldo Golijov, Steven Stucky, J.S. Bach, Laura Elise Schwendinger, and a premiere from New York-based composer, Jesse Limbacher entitled, 'Trace for ‘Cello Solo’. In the summer of 2022 at the Atlantic Music Festival in Waterville, Maine, Trace premiered the new unaccompanied cello solo ‘Hushing Song’ by Pulitzer-prize-winning American composer, Melinda Wagner.
Trace has been teaching for more than a decade in schools and private institutions both nationally and abroad. Trace is Suzuki Certified in Pre-Twinkle, Suzuki Book 1, and Book 2 from master-pedagogue, Dr. Tanya Carey. Trace worked as the principal cello teacher and group class instructor at the Palm Beach Suzuki School of Music from 2014-2021. In Florida, Trace had multiple students successfully audition into first-chair appointments at Palm Beach Youth Orchestra in West Palm Beach, Florida Youth Orchestra, Youth Orchestra of Palm Beach County in Boca Raton, and the 2020-21 All-County Middle-School Orchestra of South Florida. In 2020, Trace had several students win auditions at the 2020-21 Florida All-State Orchestra, successfully audition into the prestigious Dreyfoos School of the Arts High School in West Palm Beach. Trace also had a student win a top prize at the Festival of the Arts Competition in Boca Raton after his performance of Unaccompanied Bach dance movements from the G Major Bach Cello Suite. In Wisconsin, Trace has had students successfully audition into Wisconsin Youth Orchestra’s (WYSO) top orchestra, Youth Orchestra. Trace has recently appeared with the Madison Youth Choir, Madison Cello Ensemble, and WYSO Chamber Program as an outreach performer and chamber music instructor. Trace currently teaches a private studio of cellists at his home on the east side of Madison.
Trace has received numerous fellowship scholarships to pursue music; he has been a fellow at the Atlantic Music Festival in Watertown, ME, Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, NC, and the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, a nationally acclaimed chamber music festival, in Madison, WI. During summer studies, Trace collaborated with composers Melinda Wagner, Christopher Dobrian, George Tsontakis, Donald Crockett, Ken Ueno, and Sol-bong Kim. In 2017 and 2018, Trace shared the stage with eminent artists Midori, Anne Akiko-Myers, Stefan Jackiw, Awadagin Pratt, William Wolfram, and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenburg at the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, NC. As a Master’s student at Lynn University in Boca Raton, FL, Trace performed the Brahms Double Concerto with the Lynn Philharmonia after winning the annual concerto competition. Trace also won first prize in the Lyric Chamber Society of New York's Chamber Competition and first prize at the John Oliveira String Competition.
Trace is one-quarter Mexican whose ancestry comes from relatives who emigrated from Chihuahua, Mexico to the bay area of California in the middle of the 19th century. Trace is affiliated with the national organization and diversity in the arts leader, Sphinx organization, and has been a scholarship recipient several times in recent years. In Spring 2023, Trace was a top-prize winner at the Bolz Center for Arts Administration’s Arts Business Competition in addition to receiving the Lyman S.V. Judson and Ellen Mackechnie Judson Graduate Student Award in the Creative Arts, Creative Arts Division Creative Arts Award, and the Mead Witter Music School Graduate Student Grant Competition award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Trace received his Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2012 and his Master’s of Music from Lynn Conservatory in December 2016; his principal instructors have been David Cole, Dr. Melissa Kraut, Joseph Johnson, and Dr. Tanya Carey. Trace is currently dissertating with a minor in Electro-Acoustic Music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Mead Witter School of Music as a Collins Fellow studying with cellist and Feldenkreis practitioner, Uri Vardi and Pro Arte Quartet cellist, Parry Karp.