Violist-comedian returns to Chapel

Next weekend, a violist is coming to Chapel Restoration with a bagful of jokes.

In a way, Isabel Hagen's act reprises and modernizes Borscht Belt legend Henny Youngman, known as the king of the one-liners ("Take my wife, please"), who displayed a violin onstage but rarely played it.

Hagen, 34, saws away on short selections adapted from Bach cello suites, then unleashes F-bombs. During shows, the music lasts for five minutes, she says, but serves as a palate cleanser between jokes.

"If I'm going dark, I'll play a suitable passage to set it up," she says.

Last year, she toured with the prominent rock group Vampire Weekend, formed in 2008. One of their songs is titled "Oxford Comma," though the lyrics never jump into the debate over its usage.

The gig happened because Hagen is a graduate of The Juilliard School, the band's intellectual style lends itself to string instruments and her husband is the band's keyboard player. "It's who you know," she says.

In her solo routine, Hagen quips that when she married Will Canzoneri, his family went into a congratulatory tizzy, which made her think, "Did I choose a loser?" Take my husband, please.

Upping the edge factor, the viola is one of the orchestra's most obscure instruments. Pitched lower than the violin, it adds another layer of sound and harmonic potential to string sections, but throughout classical music history, viola solos, chamber works and concertos versus music written for the violin are hard to find.

Hagen started on the fiddle in the classical vein for five years, but at age 10, "I had a crush on my brother's friend who played viola and heard that because there are fewer of us, there's more work," she says. "As a shy, awkward kid, I figured that I could be a good teammate and was desperate to fit in, so it was nice to be in the background but still be necessary."

Choosing the viola propelled a music career, but she turned to comedy after an injury forced her hand, knowing nothing about her predecessor Youngman until she hit the podcast circuit and heard about him. "He was so deadpan and self-deprecating, like me," she says. "It's so trippy and fun to learn about him."

Hagen performed at Chapel Restoration in 2024 and admits to trepidation about delivering her blunt, raunchy set in a former church. "I was like, OK, I'm down for whatever," Hagen recalls. "The crowd was so fun — I didn't expect it."

Being a young woman with a public interface who has reached a modicum of fame — she performed on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon — has its downsides.

"So many haters; it's a snake pit," she says. "Every woman has to deal with this, but I can't spend time getting upset. My defiance is to ignore it as best I can."

The Chapel Restoration is located at 45 Market St. in Cold Spring. Tickets for the performance, which begins at 7 p.m., are $25 at dub.sh/hagen-chapel.