Hilary Hahn
Hilary Hahn (born November 27, 1979) is an American violinist. A three-time Grammy Award winner,[4] she has performed throughout the world as a soloist with leading orchestras and conductors, and as a recitalist. She is an avid supporter of contemporary classical music, and several composers have written works for her, including concerti by Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon, partitas by Antón García Abril, two serenades for violin and orchestra by Einojuhani Rautavaara, and a violin and piano sonata by Lera Auerbach.
Hilary Hahn
November 27, 1979
Lexington, Virginia, US
Musician
- violin
- 1864 J.B. Vuillaume (Il Cannone Guarneri reproduction)[1]
- 1865 J.B. Vuillaume (Alard Stradivarius loose reproduction)[2][3]
1991–present
Early life and education[edit]
Hahn was born in Lexington, Virginia, on November 27, 1979,[5] and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland.[6][7] Her father, Steve Hahn, was a journalist and librarian;[6][7] her paternal great-grandmother was from Bad 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 the Suzuki Program of Baltimore's Peabody Institute.[8] She participated in a Suzuki class for a year. From 1985 to 1990 she studied in Baltimore under Klara Berkovich.[9]
In 1990, at age ten, she was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she studied for seven years with Jascha Brodsky, who had been a student of Eugène Ysaÿe. She learned the études of Kreutzer, Ševčík, Gaviniès and Rode, Paganini's Caprices, 28 violin concertos, and chamber works and assorted showpieces.[10]
At 16 she completed the Curtis Institute's university requirements, but she remained for several years to pursue elective courses until her graduation in May 1999 with a Bachelor of Music degree.[10] During this time she studied violin with Jaime Laredo[11] and studied chamber music with Felix Galimir and Gary Graffman.[5]
She also spent four summers in the total-immersion language programs in German, French, and Japanese at Middlebury College.[12]
Journal[edit]
Hahn's website includes a section titled "By Hilary." In a Strings 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.[58] A few years later she expanded the postcards to a journal format. Journal entries usually include photographs from her tours and rehearsals.
Personal life[edit]
Since 2016, Hahn and her husband have lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after having lived in New York City for several years.[59][60] They have two daughters.[59]
On September 1, 2019, Hahn announced that she was taking a year-long sabbatical and would resume performing in the mid-2020 season.[61]