Honoring Thomas Zajac

The Thomas Zajac Memorial Scholarship (est. 2021) provides a biennial scholarship of $1,500 to early-music performers and scholars who wish to pursue specialized study in regional and/or folk traditions, instruments, or styles, for the purpose of exploring cultural interconnections in early music.
The recipient is selected by a jury of musicians who knew or worked with the great multi-instrumentalist and educator, Tom Zajac (1956-2015). Tom Zajac’s research, and the educational and performance programs he developed from it, often focused on the cross-fertilizations that occurred when disparate cultures were thrown together by turbulent forces of history such as colonization, war, migration, and trade. Zajac was curious about the new musical forms that would gradually emerge from these encounters as expressed in the more-intimate sphere of local communities.
The Zajac Scholarship was funded by donations from Tom’s many friends and colleagues. A list of donors and Tom Zajac’s bio can be viewed below.
To make a donation to the Zajac Memorial Scholarship Fund, visit our Named Scholarship Funds donation page and designate the Zajac fund in the appropriate field.
Read more: EMA Scholarship Music Master Zajac
2025 Recipient: Christoper Ellis Montes

Early Music America is pleased to announce that Christoper Ellis Montes is the third recipient of the biennial Thomas Zajac Memorial scholarship. Ellis plans to use the scholarship to continue his study of the use of the pipe and tabor (as well as other combinations of wind and percussion instruments played by a single musician) in Peru with a emphasis on the intersection of Indigenous and European influences on the instruments.
“I am grateful to those who made this scholarship possible. When I was starting to learn about early music, I had the opportunity to see and even meet with Thomas Zajac, and his example and passion have inspired me to continue onwards in my career as a musician. I have been researching the use of the pipe and tabor in South America, focusing especially on the Viceroyalty of Peru, and the Thomas Zajac Memorial Scholarship will give me an opportunity to study how my ancestors and relatives have developed and passed down these traditions.
Since seeing the pipe and tabor in the 18th-century Codex Trujillo, I have wanted to learn more about how the instruments came to be so well-represented in that collection of watercolors and notated music from my mother’s birthplace. My research has led me to the modern traditions of the pipe and tabor used in religious and cultural festivals and to the millennia-old tradition of the sikuriada—the troupes of people playing panpipes and drums simultaneously.
In the last year, I have performed some of the music from the Codex Trujillo on pipe and tabor in collaboration with Latin American musicians and Peruvian folkloric dancers, and this scholarship will help me continue to collaborate with more artists who are keepers of our traditions. I also look forward to learning even more of the repertoire from our traditions, especially those that show the developments that were hinted at in documents throughout Andean history.”
Previous Recipients
2021: Laury Gutiérrez
2023: Brandi Berry Benson