By Matt Skoufalos
Traci Foster’s path to a medical imaging career wasn’t a direct one, but it’s ended up getting her exactly where she wanted to be. After completing an undergraduate degree in elementary education, Foster returned to her hometown of Rochester, Minnesota, to attend radiology school at the Mayo Clinic. She graduated, worked at the Mayo Clinic for a year, and then relocated to Texas, where today, she is the director of radiology and radiation oncology at the Houston-based St. Joseph Medical Center.
“I certainly didn’t have a plan for what I wanted to do when I grew up,” Foster said. “It just kind of fell that way. I do it for the patients. I do it for the staff. I love working with people.”
In comparison, Foster’s career as a live performer was far more considered, and no less accomplished. At eight, she picked up the violin — despite wanting to learn the viola, her hands were too small for the instrument when she started — and never looked back.
By high school, Foster’s musical career had taken her through a variety of performance opportunities, including those with the Rochester, Minnesota Symphony, with which she and a classmate were just the second and third high-schoolers to play in the history of the orchestra.
“That was a huge learning experience for me,” Foster said. “In my previous experience in high school, you get music and you have several months to learn these pieces before you perform them. In symphony, it’s a lot of sight-reading, and we’re performing it next week. It’s a lot more pressure, and an amazing experience to play along with other professionals and learn from them.”
In college, Foster stepped up to join the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra, a community orchestra comprising players from Fargo, North Dakota, and from Moorhead, Minnesota. In her experiences there, she had the opportunity to play in an opera company pit orchestra as well, which was a new and distinct challenge.
“It’s completely different than being in a symphony,” Foster said. “If you make a mistake, it’s a little more obvious.”
In high school, Foster toured Europe with her performance group; in college, she toured Canada. But after she graduated, Foster also enjoyed a distinct experience through the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony: playing back-up to 1960s majestic rock act, The Moody Blues.
The British band frequently performs with the backing of an orchestra, but in lieu of touring America with one, they would pick up players in every town along the way, rehearse the repertoire, and then run the performance live. Each of the orchestra players’ instruments were individually amplified — which meant, nerve-rackingly, that any mistakes would be as well.
For as much as her musical career had offered her to that point, Foster hadn’t experienced anything like it before.
“It was an amazing experience,” she said. “The rehearsals, you can really tell, they jelled. They can communicate with body language; just a look at each other, and they’re going to do that refrain again, or ‘Let’s keep going because the audience is really liking this.’ ”
“Watching that happen, and the talent that they have, it was an experience I will never forget,” Foster said. “It was a big undertaking for them. For me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be able to see how such a successful band comes together, and can put on this fabulous show with a bunch of strangers getting together a few hours beforehand. I carry my backstage pass in my violin case still.”
While participating in the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony, Foster and a few of her fellow players created a quartet based around a violist who wrote original compositions and arranged other well-known radio hits for a chamber ensemble. The group booked all manner of events, from weddings to parties, and Foster herself also taught private violin lessons to about 30 students, of all ages, from her own studio.
“We’d give recitals,” she remembered; “I really enjoyed that, and being able to see them progress, which gave me a lot of pleasure.”
Today, Foster has become a student of music again, taking lessons on the piano, and having fun amid the effort of training her brain to think in terms of a different instrument altogether. Playing the piano involves reading musical notation on two staffs — bass and treble clef — whereas playing the violin involves only one of these at once. Now, when she joins a recital, it’s as a beginner among others. Her aims are to reach a proficiency that will allow her to simply sit down and play in public, be it classical or popular music.
“It’s so interesting to sit back and be a student again,” she said. “Musically, my goal is to become as comfortable on piano as I was on violin. I just need more time and experience with it to really feel comfortable sharing it with strangers. I love my teacher. He’s very well-versed, and I’m learning much more of a variety of styles.”
When she’s not working or honing her chops, Foster is also an avid runner who’s completed more than 20 marathons, several half-marathons, and an Ironman triathlon, which involves running, cycling and swimming. She said she’s “gotten the races out of [her] system, and the medals,” and now enjoys simply discovering new and fun places to enjoy running outside.
For fun, Foster and her husband, Darryl, enjoy taking trips in their Van’s Aircraft RV-7, a two-seat, single-engine airplane that Darryl built and maintains himself. In it, the couple has the flexibility to travel across the country for sightseeing, date nights or to visit any of the children in their blended family.
She still plays violin for special services at her community church, and, occasionally, for audiences at the hospital. Although Foster isn’t involved with a symphony at the moment, her work in radiology keeps her close to patients, which she said allows her to “make the best difference and the biggest difference.”
