Hahn was born inLexington, Virginia, on November 27, 1979,[5] and grew up in theBaltimore, Maryland, area.[6][7] Her father, Steve Hahn, was a journalist and librarian;[6][7] her paternal great-grandmother was fromBad Dürkheim in Germany.[6] Her mother, Anne, was an accountant.[6][7]
A musically precocious child, Hahn began playing the violin one month before her fourth birthday in theSuzuki Program of Baltimore'sPeabody Institute.[8] She studied using the Suzuki method until age five before studying in Baltimore underKlara Berkovich from 1985 to 1990.[9]
At 16 she completed the Curtis Institute's university requirements, but she remained for an additional three years to pursue elective courses until her graduation in May 1999 with aBachelor of Music degree.[10] During this time she studied violin withJaime Laredo[11] and studied chamber music withFelix Galimir andGary Graffman.[5]
In 1996, she debuted atCarnegie Hall in New York City as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, playingSaint-Saens's third violin concerto.[17] In a 1999 interview withStrings Magazine, she cited people influential to her development as a musician and a student, includingDavid Zinman, the conductor of the Baltimore Symphony and Hahn's mentor since she was ten, and Lorin Maazel, with whoseBavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra she performed in Europe.[18]
Hahn has been interested in cross-genre collaboration and pushing musical boundaries. She began performing and touring incrossover duos with singer-songwriterJosh Ritter in 2007 and with singer-songwriterTom Brosseau in 2005.[32] She has recorded songs with "…And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead".[33] In 2012 she released an album with German pianist and composerHauschka (Volker Bertelmann) titledSilfra. The songs on the disc were completely improvised.Silfra was produced byValgeir Sigurðsson.[34][35] According to her, "Other musicians cross genres all the time. For me it's not crossover—I just enter their world. It frees you up to think in a different way from what you've been trained to do."[36]
In June 2014, Hahn was awarded theGlashütte Original MusikFestspiel-Preis of theDresden Music Festival.[37]
Since 2016, she has piloted free concerts for parents with infants, a knitting circle, a community dance workshop, a yoga class, and art students. She plans to continue these community-oriented concerts, encouraging people to combine live performances with their interests outside the concert hall and providing opportunities for parents to hear music with their infants, who might be barred from traditional concerts.[38]
In 2020, Hahn and AI roboticist and tech entrepreneurCarol E. Reiley cofounded DeepMusic.ai to work with artists and AI companies to amplify human creativity.[39]
In August 2022,Classic FM listed Hahn as one of the 25 greatest violinists of all time.[40]
After playingEinojuhani Rautavaara's violin concerto, Hahn commissioned another concerto from Rautavaara, but due to his weak condition the project was thought to be forgotten. But after his death, it was revealed to conductorMikko Franck, a friend of Rautavaara's, that Rautavaara had written two serenades for violin and orchestra. The serenades were premiered on Hahn's albumParis.[51]
In 2016 and 2017, in recital tours across the U.S., Europe, and Japan, she premiered six new partitas for solo violin byAntón García Abril, her first commissioning project for solo violin, as well as her first commission of a set of works from a single composer. She forged a relationship with García Abril duringIn 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores. Digital and physical editions of the complete sheet music for these 27 encores have been released byBoosey & Hawkes. In 2019 Hahn andLera Auerbach premiered Auerbach's sonata for violin and pianoFractured Dreams.
In 1999 Hahn said that she playedBach more than any other composer and had played solo Bach pieces every day since she was eight.[10]
Bach is, for me, the touchstone that keeps my playing honest. Keeping the intonation pure indouble stops, bringing out the various voices where the phrasing requires it, crossing the strings so that there are not inadvertent accents, presenting the structure in such a way that it's clear to the listener without being pedantic – one can't fake things in Bach, and if one gets all of them to work, the music sings in the most wonderful way.
In a segment onNPR titled "Musicians in Their Own Words", she spoke about the surreal experience of playing the BachChaconne (from thePartita for Violin No. 2) alone on the concert stage. In the same segment she discussed her experiences emulating a lark while playingThe Lark Ascending byRalph Vaughan Williams.[56]
Her violin is an 1864 copy of Paganini'sCannone made byJean-Baptiste Vuillaume.[1] In an interview on Danish television, Hahn said she almost never leaves her instrument out of sight. She uses bows by American bow maker Isaac Salchow.[57] For her strings, she usesThomastik-Infeld Dominants for the A (aluminum wound), D and G (silver wound) and a Pirastro Gold Label Steel E.[58]
She has also acquired a second Vuillaume, an 1865 model loosely based on the1715 Alard Stradivarius, and has used both in recent years for recording and performing.[2][3]
Hahn's website includes a section titled "By Hilary." In aStrings Magazine interview, she said that the idea for her "Postcards from the Road" feature originated during an outreach visit to a third-grade class in upstate New York. The class was doing a geography project in which the students asked everyone they knew who was traveling to send postcards from the cities they were visiting to learn more about the world. She decided to participate after receiving a positive reaction to her suggestion that she take part.[10] She enjoyed her first year's experience with the project so much that she decided to continue it on her new website.[59] A few years later she expanded the postcards to a journal format. Journal entries usually include photographs from her tours and rehearsals.
Since 2016, Hahn and her husband have lived inCambridge, Massachusetts, after having lived in New York City for several years.[60][61] They have two daughters.[60]
Hilary Hahn Plays Bach: Sonatas 1 & 2, Partita 1 (2018) with Sonata for Violin Solo No. 1 in G minor, BWV 1001, Partita for Violin Solo No. 1 in B minor, BWV 1002, and Sonata for Violin Solo No. 2 in A minor, BWV 1003.
6 Partitas by Antón García Abril (2019) Partitas for solo violin written for Hilary Hahn
Eugène Ysaÿe Six Sonatas for Violin Solo Op.27 (2023).[69]
Night After Night(Music from the Movies of M. Night Shyamalan) (2023), with James Newton Howard, composer;Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano; andMaya Beiser, cello.[70]
^"Archived copy".www.sonyclassical.com. Archived fromthe original on November 20, 2006. RetrievedJanuary 11, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^Mermelstein, David (October 26, 2011)."The Commissioner of Short Works".The Wall Street Journal.Archived from the original on October 16, 2017. RetrievedOctober 2, 2013.
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