Tracy Kashi
Courageous, witty and passionate performer who fought to demystify breast cancer
FEW PEOPLE have embraced life and the imminence of death with as much equanimity, humour and fullness of being as the singer, comedienne and actress, Tracy Kashi, who has died aged 47. I watched Tracy’s life unfold before my eyes — the life of someone still young and full of vigour, whose story was yet to be written. Her gifts for singing, for comedy and performance, were prodigious even from an early age.
I first met Tracy at Hasmonean prep school — a five-year-old with a glowing smile and curly black pigtails tied with red ribbons. She was exactly between the ages of my daughters Daliah and Donna, all three destined to become life-long friends, from primary to secondary school, Henrietta Barnett — where Tracy was head girl — and beyond. In those early years when I picked them up from school, I remember the girls opening the car windows and belting out a Barbados song Tracy had heard on tape, whose raunchy lyrics stopped pedestrians in their tracks. “Bend down and roll your belly!” — she shrieked at the top of her voice. “I want to marry Jeannetka, but she is much too bony, bony, bony!”
Born into a Persian-German-Israeli family in North West London, her father Isaac was a local GP and her mother Shoshana (née Miliband), a nurse. It was a home-life with a world of music, classical, Hebrew, Middle Eastern, shared by Tracy and her older sister Emily, a gifted pianist. Tracy’s performative talents soon became evident. She played violin for the Jewish Youth Orchestra and was always creating funny sketches with her friends or singing show tunes at the top of her voice.
The friendship between our families grew and soon we were sharing festivals, seder nights filled with piano music, dancing, dressing up and singing to a blend of Sephardi and Ashkenazi music. Tracy had a special wit and charm; her voice, deep and resonant.
A law degree from Middlesex University didn’t satisfy her; she had a dramatic calling and was committed to fulfilling her early dreams. On the day she qualified as a solicitor she quit her job with a local law firm. Within six months she had an agent and in 2001 joined a touring company performing the musical Rent. That same year she met Chris Hardy, whom she would eventually marry. In 2003 she was the first recipient of a Cameron Macintosh scholarship and took a new masters course in musical theatre at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, which she completed the following year.
When her father developed a brain tumour in 2005 Tracy looked after her family until his death in 2008. This experience dispelled any doubts she had about her capacity to have a family of her own and in 2009 she married Chris. Their daughter Autumn was born the following year, then five years and two miscarriages later she had her second daughter Bluebell. Tracy embraced motherhood with as much passion as she did her career.
She continued working with projects at the Southbank, including frequent appearances at the Royal Festival Hall, and supported acts like The Grateful Dead, Elbow, Faithless and Bobby McFerrin. Smaller, more intimate projects included the duo Ten Little Strings with Tracy on ukulele, Daliah on guitar. Tracy called their vocal harmonising a “vocal osmosis”. She had more success after Bluebell’s birth and was commissioned to voice the theme tunes to a new adaptation of Maigret and The Halcyon. She also wrote and recorded her own songs with her friend Ian Shaw.
On Friday, April 13, 2018 she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. With a blend of irony and fatalism she forged a comedic career out of a plethora of medical procedures and what she considered the insane opinions often expressed over how to beat cancer. It culminated in her JW3 one-woman show, My Cancer Gap Year. It was filled with humour — yet her rendition of Purcell’s Dido’s Lament was the most powerful farewell I have heard, even from celebrated opera divas.
In September, 2019 she was given the devastating news that the cancer had spread but in true Tracy style she responded to her terminal diagnosis with the phrase “terminal shmerminal.”
She became an advocate for demystifiying cancer and cancer treatments and refused to allow herself to be a victim or be typecast as a cancer patient. She would say “cancer is something that is happening to me, it is not who I am”. Tracy supported Future Dreams, a charity specialising in raising awareness and research into secondary breast cancer. She did this in her unique way, writing a new comedy show, Incurable, which was unfortunately cut short due to Covid.
As Chris explained: “During lockdown her plans changed, becoming smaller and more intimate and focused on the family and seeing the beautiful in the small.
“Her last year was a gentle one, enjoying special moments with her friends and family, and as always, Tracy decided when it was time to exit. She ended her cancer treatments when her quality of life was impaired. She was able to celebrate her 47th birthday with her friends and family, and spent the last few weeks of her life enjoying her garden, singing, dancing and laughing with me, Autumn and Bluebell.”
The last time I saw Tracy was at our family seder this year and it bought back a poignant memory. It was when my son was born and ten-yearold Tracy sat watching me feed him. Suddenly she burst into tears. “It’s every woman’s right to have a baby,” she sobbed. Although we laughed, in her tears I sensed something else, a premature awareness that life may be unfair and may not always yield its fruits to everyone. There was a fleeting understanding.
The “woman’s right” Tracy so desperately claimed as a child was fulfilled. “I am proud of what I have achieved,” she told me recently. “I am happy with what I have done with my life”.
“One thing Tracy never liked was long goodbyes,” Chris added, “and true to form she left us very quickly with a wealth of memories, songs, love and laughter. In one of her last cognitive moments she turned to a hospice nurse and said: ‘This dying bit is easy, I wish I could be terminal, but not ill’. She died surrounded by her friends and family.”
Tracy is survived by Chris, daughters Autumn and Bluebell, sister Emily and extended family. Her mother predeceased her in 2021.
Tracy Kashi: born Febuary 11, 1975. Died April 28, 2022