Hilary Hahn facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Hilary Hahn |
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Hahn in 2019
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| Background information | |
| Born | November 27, 1979 Lexington, Virginia, U.S. |
| Genres | Classical |
| Occupation(s) | Musician |
| Instruments |
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| Years active | 1991–present |
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Hilary Hahn (born November 27, 1979) is a famous American violinist. She has won three Grammy Awards for her amazing music. Hilary plays her violin all over the world. She performs alone with big orchestras and conductors. She also gives solo concerts.
Hilary loves new classical music. Many composers have written special pieces just for her. These include violin concertos by Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon. Other works include partitas by Antón García Abril. She also has two serenades for violin and orchestra by Einojuhani Rautavaara. A violin and piano sonata by Lera Auerbach was also written for her.
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Early Life and Learning Music
Hilary Hahn was born in Lexington, Virginia. This was on November 27, 1979. She grew up near Baltimore, Maryland. Her father, Steve Hahn, was a journalist and librarian. Her mother, Anne, was an accountant.
Hilary was very talented at music from a young age. She started playing the violin before she turned four. She learned using the Suzuki method at Baltimore's Peabody Institute. She studied with Klara Berkovich from 1985 to 1990.
In 1990, when she was ten, Hilary joined the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She studied there for seven years. Her teacher was Jascha Brodsky, who had been a student of Eugène Ysaÿe. She learned many difficult violin pieces. These included works by Kreutzer, Ševčík, Gaviniès, Rode, and Paganini. She also learned 28 violin concertos.
Hilary finished her university studies at Curtis when she was 16. But she stayed for three more years. She took extra classes and graduated in May 1999. During this time, she studied violin with Jaime Laredo. She also learned chamber music with Felix Galimir and Gary Graffman. She also spent four summers learning German, French, and Japanese.
Hilary Hahn's Music Career
On December 21, 1991, Hilary Hahn was 12 years old. She played with a major orchestra for the first time. This was the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Soon after, she performed with other big orchestras. These included the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.
Her first international performance was in 1994. She played in Hungary with Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. In 1995, she debuted in Germany. She played the Beethoven Violin Concerto. This concert was broadcast across Europe.
In 1996, she played at Carnegie Hall in New York City. She was a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. She played Saint-Saens's third violin concerto. In an interview, she mentioned people who helped her. These included David Zinman, a conductor, and Lorin Maazel.
Hilary started recording music in 1996. She appeared on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood in 2000. Mr. Rogers visited a music store, and she played for him. She has released 16 albums with different labels. She also has three DVDs and an Oscar-nominated movie soundtrack. One of her recordings for children won an award.
Her albums often mix new and old music. For example, she paired Beethoven with Bernstein. She also paired Schoenberg with Sibelius. Other pairings include Brahms with Stravinsky. She also combined Tchaikovsky with Jennifer Higdon.
Hilary has played with many famous orchestras. These include the London Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 2007, she played for Pope Benedict XVI in Vatican City. This concert was recorded and released.
She also plays chamber music. This is music for a small group of instruments. She has performed almost every year at the Skaneateles Chamber Music Festival. She also studied chamber music at the Marlboro Music Festival. In 2004, she toured Russia with the Poulenc Trio.
Hilary enjoys trying different types of music. She has performed with singer-songwriters like Josh Ritter and Tom Brosseau. She also recorded songs with the band "...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead". In 2012, she released an album called Silfra with Hauschka. The songs on this album were completely made up on the spot. Hilary says, "For me it's not crossover—I just enter their world."
In June 2014, Hilary won an award at the Dresden Music Festival. Since 2016, she has offered free concerts. These are for parents with infants, knitting groups, and yoga classes. She wants to help people combine live music with their hobbies. She also wants parents to enjoy music with their babies.
In 2020, Hilary co-founded DeepMusic.ai. This company works with artists and AI companies. Their goal is to help human creativity using artificial intelligence. In August 2022, Classic FM named Hilary one of the 25 greatest violinists ever. In January 2024, she received the Avery Fisher Prize.
New Music for Hilary
Hilary Hahn is known for supporting new music. In 1999, she asked Edgar Meyer to write a concerto for her. She later recorded this piece. In 2010, a concerto written for her by Jennifer Higdon won the Pulitzer Prize in Music.
She also asked 26 modern composers to write short pieces. These were for her project In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores. Famous composers like David Del Tredici and Jennifer Higdon contributed. For the 27th piece, she held a contest. Over 400 people entered, and Jeff Myers won. She toured with these pieces from 2011 to 2013. The recording of these pieces won a Grammy Award.
After playing a violin concerto by Einojuhani Rautavaara, Hilary asked him for another. He wrote two serenades for violin and orchestra. These were first performed on Hilary's album Paris.
In 2016 and 2017, she performed new partitas for solo violin. These were written by Antón García Abril. This was her first time asking one composer for a whole set of solo pieces. In 2019, Hilary and Lera Auerbach performed Auerbach's new sonata. It was called Fractured Dreams.
Music for Movies
Hilary Hahn has also played music for films. In 2004, she was the soloist for the movie The Village. The music was composed by James Newton Howard. The film's music was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score.
Her recording of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto was used in The Deep Blue Sea. This movie starred Rachel Weisz. In 2013, she was the soloist for the film The Sea.
Playing Bach's Music
In 1999, Hilary Hahn said she played Bach more than any other composer. 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
She once talked about playing Bach's Chaconne alone on stage. She also discussed how she tried to sound like a lark. This was when she played The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Hilary's Violin
Hilary's main violin was made in 1864. It is a copy of Paganini's Cannone violin. It was made by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume. Hilary said she almost never lets her violin out of her sight. She uses bows made by Isaac Salchow. For her strings, she uses Thomastik-Infeld Dominants and a Pirastro Gold Label Steel E string.
She also has another Vuillaume violin, made in 1865. It is based on the 1715 Alard Stradivarius. She has used both violins for recordings and performances.
Hilary's Journal
Hilary Hahn's website has a section called "By Hilary." She said the idea for her "Postcards from the Road" came from a visit to a third-grade class. The students were doing a geography project. They asked travelers to send postcards from different cities. Hilary decided to join in.
She enjoyed the project so much that she continued it on her website. A few years later, she changed the postcards to a journal format. Her journal entries often include photos from her tours and rehearsals.
Personal Life
Since 2016, Hilary Hahn and her husband have lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Before that, they lived in New York City for several years. They have two daughters.
Discography
- Hilary Hahn Plays Bach (1997)
- Beethoven Violin Concerto / Bernstein Serenade (1999)
- Barber & Meyer Violin Concertos (2000)
- Brahms & Stravinsky Violin Concertos (2001)
- Mendelssohn & Shostakovich Concertos (2002)
- Bach Concertos (2003)
- The Village Motion Picture Soundtrack (2004)
- Elgar: Violin Concerto; Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending (2004)
- Mozart: Violin Sonatas K. 301, K. 304, K. 376 & K. 526 (2005)
- "To Russia My Homeland" from Worlds Apart (2005)
- Paganini: Violin Concerto No. 1 / Spohr: Violin Concerto No. 8 – Gesangsszene (2006)
- "Witch's Web" from So Divided (2006)
- Der Kleine Hörsaal – Die Geige mit Hilary Hahn (2007)
- "Fork in the Road" and "Blue Part of the Windshield" from Grand Forks (2007)
- Schoenberg: Violin Concerto; Sibelius: Violin Concerto (2008)
- "Bach: Violin & Voice" (2010)
- Higdon & Tchaikovsky Violin Concertos (2010)
- Charles Ives: Four Sonatas (2011)
- Silfra (2012)
- In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores (2013)
- Mozart 5, Vieuxtemps 4 – Violin Concertos (2015)
- Hilary Hahn Plays Bach: Sonatas 1 & 2, Partita 1 (2018)
- 6 Partitas by Antón García Abril (2019)
- Paris (2021)
- Eclipse (2022)
- Eugène Ysaÿe Six Sonatas for Violin Solo Op.27 (2023)
- Night After Night (Music from the Movies of M. Night Shyamalan) (2023)
See also
In Spanish: Hilary Hahn para niños
