The beat of drums has become the soundtrack to her life.

For sophomore and drummer Tigerlily Eltzschig, music has shaped the way she sees the world.

Eltzschig began playing drums at the age of nine after testing out singing and the ukulele. Her father encouraged her to take a free trial at a local music school, and she connected with the instrument immediately.

“I tried a lot of instruments when I was younger, I did singing lessons, I played ukulele for a bit, but they never really stuck with me,” Eltzschig said. “When I [tried drums] I loved it right away. I could not stop talking about how much I enjoyed it.”

Music has always been a large part of Eltzschig’s life. Her dad introduced her to rock early on.

“My dad had always played Deep Purple songs,” Eltzschig said. “One of the first songs I learned was ‘Smoke on the Water’ from Deep Purple. It’s really stereotypical, but it’s special to me because I grew up hearing it.”

For her sister, Josephine Eltzschig, it is clear that music has always been the comforting space where she feels safest to express herself.

“I think music has been a very big factor in her life,” Josephine Eltzschig said. “It’s something that keeps her going and makes her happy. How she deals with emotions is through music. When she’s happy or sad or whatever, the music kind of speaks with her.”

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Josephine Eltzschig cheers on her sister in one of her performances. Tigerlily Eltzschig said that her sister has “always been someone that’s been there for [her].”

Music also became the place where she felt the most understood.

“I think it’s just something that I could always connect to,” Eltzschig said. “I felt that music was able to understand me more than words or books or anything else ever could.”

As she grew older, the pull became stronger. Her sister said that from her first performance with her rock band class, performing gave Eltzschig a way to express that love.

“It’s one thing to play music for yourself and your friends,” Josephine Eltzschig said. “But being able to share it with other people is something she really enjoys. She craves the stage, craves playing music for others.”

In ninth grade, Eltzschig formed a band, Tiger and the Lilies, with her friends Connie Krane, Elias German, Jimmy Emanuel Puac Mendez and Violet Bradley who shared her drive.

“[Forming a band] was something I always wanted to do,” Eltzschig said. “We were already playing in a lot of things, like we played in the talent show, and for Music as Medicine, and we just thought, why not just make a band and have it be our own thing?”

The group expanded naturally as the members found more musicians who matched their style and energy.

“We have two guitarists right now,” Eltzschig said. “Both of them go to Bellaire, [Emanuel Puac Mendez] and [German]. They just really liked a lot of the same music we did, so we felt like we could relate to them.”

Practices often happen at Eltzschig’s house, where she guides the band in staying productive.

“If I feel like we’ve been talking about something for too long, or we need to move on to the next song, I’ll try to manage it a bit,” Eltzschig said. “But I’d say we all really work well together as a team, and no one’s really above anyone. And that’s one thing that I really love. Everyone has an equal input.”

Provided by Tigerlily Eltzschig

Eltzschig sits at the drums as her bandmates gather during practice. She regularly hosts rehearsals at her house where many of the band’s ideas come together.

Eltzschig and her bandmate, Connie Krane, were able to forge a connection based on their shared love for music.

“We’ve known each other since sixth grade,” Krane said. “We were actually sort of enemies for a long time, but we realized we both loved the same kind of music. It was something not a lot of people our age connected with, and it brought us closer together”

The two share a love for older music genres, such as jazz, with Eltzschig always going deep to learn all there is to know about the artists she listens to.

“One of my favorite artists probably ever is a jazz musician, Chet Baker,” Eltzschig said. “He took a big break in his career because he got beat up and all of his teeth fell out. He had to use dentures and relearn how to play.”

That sort of niche knowledge helped her understand why older music speaks to her in a way that modern styles often don’t.

“I like old music better because it’s more complex,” Eltzschig said. “Back then, everyone listened to the same stuff, so it felt like you were all going through time together. It gave people some kind of unity. I think that’s something that used to be really special that doesn’t exist anymore. Now, it’s just songs that get big on TikTok. It’s not the same.”

At home, the history behind music becomes a daily conversation, with Eltzschig eager to relate her own personal “encyclopedia of music history” to her family.

“She knows hundreds of artists and can tell you their entire history,” Josephine Eltzschig said. “She’s always saying, ‘Oh, on this on this song, the drummer is this guy and the guitarist is this person and it was really popular at this time period.’”

Even with her expansive knowledge on music history, Eltzschig goes further to form a real connection with the artists she listens to.

“Whether it’s the Beatles or Sade or whoever she’s listening to, she does a lot more than just listen to [their] music,” Josephine Eltzschig said. “She really hears it. She truly understands the meaning of it.”

Her curiosity as a listener grew even stronger after she saw Paul McCartney in concert.

“Being at the Paul McCartney concert made me reflect on how much he loved being in the band,” Eltzschig said. “His opening song was ‘Help,’ and the lyric ‘when I was younger, so much younger than today’ hits you live. You can see how old he’s gotten and how he still loves music.”

The concert reminded her why she feels most at home behind a drum set.

“There are times when I’m performing behind the drum set that I feel like every song is slowed down,” Eltzschig said. “When you’re on stage, it feels really slow and fast at the same time. The adrenaline is making everything move so fast, but it’s also slow because you have to think about every individual beat of a song. It creates a kind of unmatched feeling.”

Eltzschig started performing after graduating elementary school. She has done over 50 performances, ranging in crowd size up to 200 people. Her performance for the Rooftop Garden Club remains her favorite. Her experience on the roof was “different” and allowed for exposure to the performance aspect of drumming. As she has continued to perform, Eltzschig has found that there is nothing that equals the rush that she receives on the stage.

“If you love music enough, you’d want to share that love,” Eltzschig said. “Performing live lets you do that. Playing in front of an audience, just seeing large crowds, there’s something about it, like a combination of hearing music that you already really like and being able to play it. It’s a killer combination. You can’t get that rush of excitement anywhere else.”

Gallery • 2 Photos

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Eltzschig drums at a performance with her band in the Bellaire cafeteria. Tiger and the Lilies played “Kickstart My Heart,” “More Than a Feeling” and “Crazy Train” on Dec. 3.

Outside of performing, her love for music is kept in almost every detail of her life. At home, it shows up in the shelves she has filled with the 500 CDs and 300 vinyl records she has collected over time.

“One of the ways that it’s very easy to tell that Tiger has a strong love for music is because of her love of physical media,” Krane said. “Vinyls and CDs. She has an incredibly immense collection, and she devotes a really large amount of time to that collection. It’s really insane to see it in person.”

The collection is another way for Eltzschig to connect to her love for the music and artists she loves.

“A lot of them are secondhand or from family, but they’re all really special to me because I’ve been able to collect them myself,” Eltzschig said. “It’s music, so it’s everything that I love”

Gallery • 2 Photos

Provided by Tigerlily Eltzschig

Eltzschig sorts through the vinyl collection she has amassed throughout the years. Eltzschig said that when she listens to music, she finds “it feels almost like three-times longer because I know every single beat of the song.”

In many ways, her love for music goes beyond collecting. It shows up in how she thinks, talks and makes sense of the world around her.

“Sometimes people feel things, but they’re not exactly sure what they are really feeling,” Eltzschig said. “Music kind of puts it into words, literally and not literally. Sometimes the fact that music can be purely instrumental is really nice in allowing you to interpret your own feelings.”

Even with music shaping so much of her life, Eltzschig said she imagines her future expanding beyond the stage. She hopes to pursue an MD-pHD pathway, combining clinical anesthesia with research.

“I think in some ways I’d always want to be in front of an audience. Whether it’s speaking at a research meeting or talking about clinical work, I just like communicating with people,” Eltzschig said. “Because of my dad, I’ve been able to see inspiring talks from researchers in front of hundreds of people. It’s beautiful to see people who are passionate about medicine, and in a way, it feels similar to why I love performing. No matter what I do, I’ll end up communicating with people on a larger platform.”

Krane said that whatever path Eltzschig follows, music will travel with her.

“I think music is always going to be a big part of her life, the love she has for it is not something that’s going to go away,” Krane said. “It’s easy to see that she’s going to be a very successful woman, but you can tell that no matter how deep into her work she is, she’s never gonna forget her devotion to music.”

Her sister put it simply.

“She is music,” Josephine Eltzschig said. “She lives and breathes it. It’s who she is.”