Isabel Hagen went from Juilliard to stand-up, with strings attached

The musician turned comedian now incorporates her training in the viola into her comedy

by Thomas Floyd

Stand-up comic Isabel Hagen. (Photo: Arin Sang-urai)

Isabel Hagen was pursuing her master’s at Juilliard when the violist experienced a literal awakening, followed by an existential one.

One morning, a shooting pain in her shoulder and wrist jolted her from sleep. Then, when a physical therapist at the fine arts academy recommended that Hagen take two months off from playing, it came as something of a relief for a musical prodigy who had begun to experience crippling performance anxiety.

“I thought I had my life all figured out,” says Hagen, 32. “Meanwhile, I could barely play. I would shake and botch every performance. So it wasn’t going well for me.”

Around that time, Hagen — the daughter of an accomplished saxophonist and the younger sister of a burgeoning conductor and pianist — was honing an affinity for stand-up comedy, with Mitch Hedberg, Bill Burr and George Carlin among her influences. With free time on her hands, Hagen decided to hit up an open mic and give stand-up a shot. The nervousness persisted, she recalls. But in comedy, trembling hands won’t throw off a set the same way they might derail a precisely calibrated classical music performance.

“I mean, I was terrible at telling jokes,” Hagen says. “But just the act of it felt even more suited to me than music had.” 

After Hagen graduated in 2015 and entered a career as a freelance violist — a pursuit that has included broadcast performances with the likes of Ed Sheeran, Max Richter and Phoebe Bridgers — she became a regular of New York’s open-mic circuit. In 2019, she booked the New Faces showcase at the renowned Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal. Having previously performed on “The Tonight Show” as an accompanying musician, Hagen returned as a stand-up with sets in March 2020 and October 2022. Along the way, she wrote, directed and starred in the web series “Is a Violist” which she hopes to shoot as a feature film later this year.

Isabel Hagen incorporates the viola, for which she studied at Julliard, into her comedy.
(Photo: JT Anderson)

This weekend, D.C. audiences can catch Hagen’s act — now interspersing viola vignettes with comedic quips — at the Comedy Loft in DC.

First published at The Washington Post, July 17, 2023