Cel­list Tra­cell Fred­er­ick, 27, at­tained a BSc in In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy in 2016 and a Bach­e­lor of Law's de­gree (LLB) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus in 2018.

Last year, how­ev­er, test­ed her abil­i­ty to bal­ance her in­ter­ests. Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, she man­aged to grad­u­ate from two in­sti­tu­tions, the Hugh Wood­ing Law School (HWLS) with a Le­gal Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (LEC) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) with an Artist Diplo­ma in Mu­sic Per­for­mance in 2020.

Fred­er­ick bal­ances her pas­sion for the mu­si­cal scales with the le­gal scales as she was ad­mit­ted to prac­tise as an at­tor­ney in 2020 and is now the le­gal as­sis­tant to the Ari­ma May­or's Of­fice.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian from her Trinci­ty home Fred­er­ick said "As a lit­tle girl, I al­ways want­ed to be­come an at­tor­ney. I had a view­point on every top­ic and the abil­i­ty to ar­gue for my view­point.

"I was feisty and com­ment­ed on is­sues be­ing dis­cussed be­tween my par­ents, An­nette Fred­er­ick and Garth Gue­varia. I had an in­ter­est in the oth­er side of the ar­gu­ment and felt it nec­es­sary to bring it to life.

"While at SAGHS (St Au­gus­tine Girls' High School), specif­i­cal­ly in Form Three, a door opened for pro­gram­ming and I fell im­me­di­ate­ly in love."

She said she could not think of any­thing else but pro­gram­ming, it was a com­plete joy.

Fred­er­ick said her teach­ers, Ms Ali and Mrs Ba­choo sup­port­ed her dri­ve and that love grew in­to a pas­sion in Form Six when she chose Com­put­er Sci­ence as one of her CAPE sub­jects.

When ap­ply­ing to UWI, she was faced with a dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion; Law or In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy. She was ac­cept­ed in­to the Fac­ul­ty of Law and in­to the Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy.

Fred­er­ick's of­fer of ac­cep­tance for Law was one year at St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus and the last two years at Cave Hill Cam­pus in Bar­ba­dos.

She de­cid­ed to ac­cept the law of­fer, but at the end of the first year, she did not want to leave Trinidad and ap­plied for an in­ter-cam­pus trans­fer but it was de­nied.

In a quandary at that point, Fred­er­ick de­cid­ed to ap­ply for an in­ter-fac­ul­ty trans­fer and switched her de­gree to In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy.

Fred­er­ick start­ed the new de­gree in Sep­tem­ber 2013 and grad­u­at­ed with a BSc in In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (Hons) in 2016. That same year, she re-ap­plied to the Fac­ul­ty of Law and was ac­cept­ed. She start­ed from Year Two and grad­u­at­ed with LLB Law (Hons) in 2018.

Tracell Frederick with her Artist Diploma in Music Performance in 2020 from UTT.

Tracy Frederick

Fred­er­ick said in 2018 she com­menced stud­ies for her Le­gal Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate at the Hugh Wood­ing Law School.

In the last year of her un­der­grad­u­ate law de­gree in 2017, she al­so com­menced stud­ies for a diplo­ma in mu­sic per­for­mance at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, NA­PA Cam­pus, and both cours­es con­clud­ed in 2020.

It was a char­ac­ter-build­ing ex­pe­ri­ence hav­ing to bal­ance two de­mand­ing fields of study in the midst of a pan­dem­ic, she said.

How­ev­er, she was able to prove to her­self that she can at­tain any­thing once she put her mind to it and work dili­gent­ly to­wards her goals.

For Fred­er­ick, there were mo­ments when she want­ed to give up, but she pushed those neg­a­tive thoughts be­hind and fo­cused on the goals.

In 2020 she was award­ed her LEC, Artist Diplo­ma in Mu­sic Per­for­mance and ad­mit­ted to prac­tise law as an at­tor­ney in T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to Fred­er­ick, it was chal­leng­ing but time man­age­ment and a sol­id sup­port sys­tem was key.

Her pro­fes­sors at UTT worked around her HWLS sched­ule and they were al­ways en­cour­ag­ing and sup­port­ive.

Fred­er­ick's moth­er, An­nette Fred­er­ick man­aged her sched­ule and made sure she was on top of all dead­lines, as­sign­ments and stud­ies. This way she was able to fo­cus on her law stud­ies, prac­tis­ing mu­sic and teach­ing.

For Fred­er­ick, the pan­dem­ic made it eas­i­er to bal­ance study­ing, mu­sic prac­tice and teach­ing mu­sic.

Fred­er­ick said her sched­ule got lighter and she did not have to leave home, be­ing more flex­i­ble to sched­ule time for each ac­tiv­i­ty.

As it turned out, Fred­er­ick en­joyed her time in lock­down at home be­cause she got more time to fo­cus on law and mu­sic.

Fred­er­ick said when she got tired of study­ing, she switched to mu­sic pick­ing up her cel­lo for the rest of the day.

Tracell Frederick performing with QED in 2019.

Tracy Frederick

When asked if law and mu­sic com­ple­ment­ed one an­oth­er, she said they were quite dif­fer­ent in terms of lan­guage. Fred­er­ick said law had its own in­ter­pre­ta­tion and mu­sic was in its own world, how­ev­er they were sim­i­lar in terms of how one ap­proached an un­der­stand­ing of the top­ics. Both re­quire analy­sis, she said. One need­ed to break it down and build it back to­geth­er to come to a con­clu­sion.

She said in clas­si­cal mu­sic when some­one first be­gins learn­ing a piece, the per­son took it apart in terms of the notes, the pe­ri­od, feel­ings, char­ac­ter­is­tics of the com­pos­er, and tech­nique need­ed.

A per­son may de­cide to work on each one sep­a­rate­ly and then bring it to­geth­er to present to their au­di­ence the full essence of the piece.

Fred­er­ick found it was sim­i­lar with law as the at­tor­ney broke down the facts of the case, looked at the leg­is­la­tion and case law, aca­d­e­m­ic opin­ions on the is­sues, then brought it to­geth­er and pre­sent­ed it to the court.

While Fred­er­ick loved hik­ing she did not do it of­ten enough. She al­so en­joyed danc­ing, did lawn ten­nis in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school and was in the ju­nior com­pe­ti­tion cir­cuit.

Fred­er­ick said when she at­tend­ed pri­ma­ry school, Atwell's Ed­u­ca­tion­al In­sti­tute, she was in­tro­duced to mu­sic and she start­ed learn­ing the pi­ano at age nine.

She played three in­stru­ments; the cel­lo, vi­o­lin and pi­ano.

Fred­er­ick teach­es mu­sic at the T&T Youth Phil­har­mon­ic and Holis­tic Pri­ma­ry School and she is a mem­ber of the Na­tion­al Phil­har­mon­ic Or­ches­tra.

She said mu­sic ac­tiv­i­ties were a form of re­lax­ation and stress re­liev­er.

It has be­come tru­ly up­lift­ing for Fred­er­ick to learn a piece of mu­sic and have at least one per­son moved with emo­tions by the per­for­mance.

Fred­er­ick's men­tors are founder and mu­sic di­rec­tor of TTYP, Ken­neth Listhrop, Dr Charles Brun­ner, Jes­sel Mur­ray, Si­mon Browne and Dr Leah Brown.

Her favourite piece is Sonata in G mi­nor by Rach­mani­noff and she played with TTYP, NPO, Holis­tic X, Al­ter­na­tive Quar­tet, QED, Bri­an Mac­Far­lane Christ­mas Joy and many un­named en­sem­bles for wed­dings, grad­u­a­tions, award cer­e­monies, cor­po­rate events, con­certs and recitals.

Mu­sic has tak­en Fred­er­ick to coun­tries around the world such as Cu­ra­cao, Be­lize, St Maarten, UK, Wales and Man­ches­ter, Italy, and South Ko­rea.