Students Reflect: Elené Tabagari, Historical Performance

Reflecting on a Thrilling Year

Just after spring break, we asked students—some graduating, some staying on—to reflect about what they’d been doing lately, their hobbies, and some highlights of their time at Juilliard. In addition, some shared how scholarship support has helped them and what they’re doing this summer.

Elené Tabagari, Historical Performance

Hobbies
I enjoy solving escape rooms and try to visit one or a few in every new town I go to. I also like to play tennis, try new recipes for cakes and tartlets, and “paint by sound”—where I listen to music and paint whatever it inspires.

Spring break
I stayed in New York and prepared for my graduation recital. Break is a great time to play the historical keyboards
at Juilliard since there aren’t many rehearsals using them. I also took daily walks and caught up on my reading and favorite TV shows.

Highlights

• I’ve had wonderful opportunities to collaborate with my talented, dedicated, and resilient colleagues during Juilliard415 and chamber concert cycles. I’ve had great fun forming chamber groups, receiving coaching from some of the best musicians in our field, and performing in different venues around the city, including places that are historically appropriate to our repertoire.
   
• As a teaching assistant for a baroque chamber music course for students not specializing in historical performance, I get to observe and assist the professor and gain experience explaining my passion to those who are just getting started.
   
• Representing Historical Performance in the Juilliard Student Congress.

Top takeaway
I’ve become much more comfortable as a performer due to the quantity, seriousness, and diversity of the performances I’ve gotten to be a part of. My time at Juilliard has made me a more adaptable musician, which includes being able to appreciate and encourage a diversity of interpretations, adapt to changes, work on collaboration skills, get out of your comfort zone, and take advantage of opportunities. And I’m going to continue working on these valuable skills after leaving.

Scholarship support
I come from a country where higher music education is a privilege I could not afford and where I would not be able to dedicate my career to music. Without the Historical Performance scholarship, I wouldn’t be studying what I love so greatly or working with the best of the best every day.

After commencement, second-year master’s harpsichordist Elené Tabagari, who’s from Tbilisi, Georgia, will tour Bach’s B-Minor Mass with Juilliard415 and Yale’s Schola Cantorum in the U.K., and then she’ll be back in New York with her new all Juilliard ensemble, Uptown415

These pieces are adapted from a special feature that originally appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of the Juilliard Journal