Hilary Hahn Hilary Hahn

Hilary Hahn(born November 27, 1979) is an American violinist. In her active international career she has performed throughout the world both as a soloist with leading orchestras and conductors and as a recitalist. She also has built a reputation for championing contemporary music. Several composers have written works especially for her, including concertiby Edgar Meyerand Jennifer Higdonand partitas by Antón García Abril.

Early life and education

Hahn was born in Lexington, Virginiaon November 27, 1979.She began playing the violin one month before her fourth birthday in the Suzuki Programof Baltimore's Peabody Institute. She participated in a Suzuki class for a year. Between 1985 and early 1990 Hahn studied in Baltimore under Klara Berkovich.In 1990, at ten, Hahn was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Musicin Philadelphia where she became a student of Jascha Brodsky. Hahn studied with Brodsky for seven years and learned the études of Kreutzer, Ševčík, Gaviniès, Rode, and the PaganiniCaprices. She learned twenty-eight violin concertos, as well as recital programs, chamber works, and assorted showpieces.

In 1991, at the age of eleven, Hahn made her major orchestral debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.Soon thereafter, Hahn debuted with the Philadelphia Orchestra,Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic.Hahn made her international debut in 1994 performing the Bernstein Serenade in Hungary with Ivan Fisher and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Her German debut came in 1995 with a performance of the BeethovenViolin Concertowith Lorin Maazeland the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.The concert was broadcast in Europe. A year later, Hahn debuted at Carnegie Hallin New York City as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra.In a 1999 interview with Strings Magazine, Hahn cited people influential to her development as a musician and a student, including David Zinman, the conductor of the Baltimore Symphony and Hahn's mentor since she was ten, and Lorin Maazel, with whose Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestrashe performed in Europe.

By sixteen, Hahn had completed the Curtis Institute's university requirements, but elected to remain for several years to pursue elective courses, until her graduation in May 1999 with a Bachelor of Musicdegree.During this time she coached violin with Jaime Laredo,and studied chamber music with Felix Galimirand Gary Graffman.She appeared on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, in February 2000, discussing her early experiences with the violin and performing a solo and a duet.In a December 2001 interview on PBS, Hahn stated that of all musical disciplines, she is most interested in performance.

On March 17, 2015, Hahn announced on Facebook that she and her husband were expecting a child; she gave birth in August to a girl, named Zelda.

Musical career

Hahn began recording in 1996.She has released 16 albums on the Deutsche Grammophonand Sonylabels, in addition to three DVDs, an Oscar-nominated movie soundtrack, an award-winning recording for children, and various compilations. Her recordings are often marked by a blending of newer and traditional pieces.Her albums include pairings of Beethovenwith Leonard Bernstein, Schoenbergwith Sibelius, Brahmswith Stravinsky, and Tchaikovskywith Jennifer Higdon.

Hahn has played with orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra,New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, and Singapore Symphony Orchestra. She debuted with the Chicago Symphony Orchestrain March 2007, and played in Vatican City as part of the celebrations for Pope Benedict XVItogether with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Gustavo Dudamel, also in 2007.The concert was recorded and released by Deutsche Grammophon.

In addition to being a solo violinist, Hahn has also performed as a chamber musician. Since the summer of 1992 she has performed nearly every year with the Skaneateles Chamber Music Festival in Skaneateles, New York.Between 1995 and 2000 she performed and studied chamber music at the Marlboro Music Festivalin Vermont,and in 1996 she served as an artist and a member of the chamber music mentoring program of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.In 2004, she toured Saint Petersburg, Russia, with the Poulenc Trio.

On January 14, 2010, Hahn appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brienfor an interview in support of her album, Bach: Violin & Voice.

Hahn has been interested in cross-genre collaboration and pushing musical boundaries. She began performing and touring in a crossoverduo with singer-songwriterJosh Ritterin 2007 and with singer-songwriter Tom Brosseauin 2005.She has recorded songs with "…And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead".In 2012, Hahn released an album with German pianist and composer Hauschkaentitled Silfra. The songs on the disc were completely improvised. Silfrawas produced by Valgeir Sigurðsson.According to Hahn, "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."

In June 2014 Hahn was awarded the Glashütte Original MusikFestspiel-Preisof the Dresden Music Festival.

Beginning in 2016, Hahn 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 to create these community-oriented concerts, encouraging people to combine live performance 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.

Commissioning

Hahn is also a noted champion of new works. In 1999, she commissioned Edgar Meyerto write a concerto. She later recorded the piece with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.In 2010, a concerto written for Hahn by Jennifer Higdon and recorded with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonicwas awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music.

Hahn commissioned 26 contemporary composers to write short encore pieces for In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores. Among the composers are David Del Tredici, Jennifer Higdon, Du Yun, Elliott Sharp, David Lang, Nico Muhly, James Newton Howard, Valentyn Sylvestrovand Max Richter.For the 27th encore, she held an open contest that drew more than 400 entries and was won by Jeff Myers.The international premiere tours, from 2011 to 2013, were met with wide critical and audience acclaim.In November 2013, these 27 short pieces were released on Deutsche Grammophon.The recording won the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance.

In 2016 and 2017, in recital tours across the U.S., Europe, and Japan, Hahn premiered six new partitas for solo violin by Antón García Abril, her first commissioning project for solo violin, as well as her first commission of a set of works from a single composer. The relationship with García Abril was forged during In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores. Digital and physical editions of the complete sheet music will be released by Musicnotes and Boosey & Hawkes.

Film music

Hahn began her film recording career as the soloist for James Newton Howard's score for M. Night Shyamalan's The Villagein 2004. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score.Hahn's recording of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto was used extensively in The Deep Blue Sea, starring Rachel Weisz. The film uses the piece's second movement to accompany a nine-minute sequence.In 2013 Hahn was the soloist on Andrew Hewitt's score for the film The Sea.

On playing Bach

In 1999, Hahn said that she played Bach more than any other composer and that she had played solo Bach pieces every day since she was eight.

Bach is, for me, the touchstone that keeps my playing honest. Keeping the intonation pure in double 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.

— Hilary Hahn, Saint Paul Sunday

In a segment on NPRentitled "Musicians in Their Own Words", Hahn speaks about the surreal experience of playing the Bach Chaconne(from the Partita for Violin No. 2) alone on the concert stage. In the same segment, she discusses her experiences emulating a lark while playing The Lark Ascendingby Ralph Vaughan Williams.