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 an American violin player. She has won three Grammy Awards. Hilary plays as a solo artist with big orchestras and famous conductors. She also gives many solo concerts. Several composers have written music especially for her. These include violin concertos by Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon. Other pieces include serenades by Einojuhani Rautavaara and a violin and piano sonata by Lera Auerbach.
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Hilary's Early Life and Learning Music
Hilary Hahn was born in Lexington, Virginia, 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 a very talented child when it came to music. She started playing the violin just before her fourth birthday. She learned using the Suzuki method at Baltimore's Peabody Institute. She continued with the Suzuki method until she was five. After that, 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 with Jascha Brodsky. He was a student of the famous violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. Hilary learned many important violin studies and 28 violin concertos.
By age 16, she had finished all the university courses at the Curtis Institute. But she stayed for three more years to take extra classes. She graduated in May 1999 with a Bachelor of Music degree. During this time, she studied violin with Jaime Laredo. She also learned chamber music with Felix Galimir and Gary Graffman.
Hilary also spent four summers learning languages. She studied German, French, and Japanese at Middlebury College.
Hilary's Music Career
On December 21, 1991, at just 12 years old, Hilary Hahn played her first big concert. She performed with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Soon after, she played with other famous orchestras. These included the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. In 1994, she played her first international concert in Hungary. She performed with Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Her first concert in Germany was in 1995. She played the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Lorin Maazel. This concert was shown on TV across Europe.
In 1996, she played at Carnegie Hall in New York City. She was a solo performer with the Philadelphia Orchestra. She played Saint-Saens's third violin concerto. Hilary has said that David Zinman and Lorin Maazel were very important to her musical growth.
Hilary started recording music in 1996. She even appeared on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood in 2000. She has released 16 albums with Deutsche Grammophon and Sony labels. She also has three DVDs and a movie soundtrack that was nominated for an Oscar. Her recordings often mix new music with older, traditional pieces. For example, she has paired music by Beethoven with Bernstein.
Hilary has played with many top orchestras around the world. 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 as an album.
She also plays chamber music, which is music for small groups of instruments. She has performed almost every year at the Skaneateles Chamber Music Festival.
Hilary enjoys trying new things in music. She likes to work with musicians from different styles. She has performed with singer-songwriters 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 German composer Hauschka. The music on this album was completely made up on the spot. Hilary says, "Other musicians cross genres all the time. For me it's not crossover—I just enter their world."
In June 2014, Hilary won an award from the Dresden Music Festival.
Since 2016, she has started free concerts for different groups of people. These include concerts for parents with babies, knitting groups, and yoga classes. She wants to help people enjoy live music in new ways.
In 2020, Hilary and robot expert Carol E. Reiley started DeepMusic.ai. This group helps artists and AI companies work together to create new music.
In August 2022, Classic FM named Hilary Hahn as one of the 25 greatest violinists ever. In January 2024, she won the 2024 Avery Fisher Prize.
New Music for Hilary
Hilary Hahn loves to support new music. In 1999, she asked Edgar Meyer to write a violin concerto for her. She later recorded it. 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 for her. These pieces were for a project called In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores. Many famous composers wrote for this project. For the 27th piece, she held a contest. Over 400 people entered, and Jeff Myers won. Hilary toured the world playing these new pieces from 2011 to 2013. The concerts were very popular. In 2013, these 27 pieces were released as an album. It won a Grammy Award.
After playing a violin concerto by Einojuhani Rautavaara, Hilary asked him to write another. After he passed away, it was discovered he had written two serenades for violin and orchestra. Hilary premiered these pieces on her album Paris.
In 2016 and 2017, Hilary played six new pieces for solo violin. These were written by Antón García Abril. This was her first time asking one composer to write a whole set of solo pieces for her. In 2019, Hilary and Lera Auerbach performed Auerbach's new sonata for violin and piano, Fractured Dreams.
Hilary's Film Music
Hilary Hahn has also played violin for movie soundtracks. In 2004, she was the solo violinist for James Newton Howard's music in the movie The Village. This movie's music was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score. Her recording of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto was used in the movie The Deep Blue Sea. In 2013, she played for Andrew Hewitt's music in the film The Sea.
Playing Bach's Music
In 1999, Hilary Hahn said that she plays music by Bach more than any other composer. She has played solo Bach pieces every day since she was eight years old.
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
Hilary has also talked about how special it feels to play Bach's Chaconne by herself on stage. She also shared her experience of pretending to be a lark (a type of bird) while playing The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Hilary's Violin
Hilary's main violin was made in 1864 by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume. It is a copy of Paganini's famous Cannone violin. Hilary has said she almost never lets her violin out of her sight. She uses bows made by Isaac Salchow. For her strings, she uses specific types: Thomastik-Infeld Dominants for the A, D, and G strings, and a Pirastro Gold Label Steel E string.
She also has another Vuillaume violin, made in 1865. This one is based on the 1715 Alard Stradivarius. She uses both violins for recording and performing.
Hilary's Online Journal
Hilary Hahn's website has a section called "By Hilary." She started this feature after visiting a third-grade class. The students were doing a geography project. They asked everyone they knew who was traveling to send postcards from different cities. Hilary decided to join in. She enjoyed it so much that she kept doing it on her website. Later, she changed the postcards into a journal format. Her journal entries often include photos from her tours and rehearsals.
Hilary's Family 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.
Hilary's Albums
- Hilary Hahn Plays Bach (1997)
- Beethoven Violin Concerto / Bernstein Serenade (1999)
- Nominated for a Grammy Award
- Barber & Meyer Violin Concertos (2000)
- Brahms & Stravinsky Violin Concertos (2001)
- Won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra)
- 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 the album Worlds Apart by ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (2005)
- Paganini: Violin Concerto No. 1 / Spohr: Violin Concerto No. 8 – Gesangsszene (2006)
- "Witch's Web" from the album So Divided by ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (2006)
- Der Kleine Hörsaal – Die Geige mit Hilary Hahn (2007)
- "Fork in the Road" and "Blue Part of the Windshield" from the album Grand Forks by Tom Brosseau (2007)
- Schoenberg: Violin Concerto; Sibelius: Violin Concerto (2008)
- Debuted at No. 1 on Classical Billboard chart.
- Won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra)
- Nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Album
- "Bach: Violin & Voice" (2010)
- Higdon & Tchaikovsky Violin Concertos (2010)
- Charles Ives: Four Sonatas (2011)
- Silfra (2012)
- In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores (2013)
- Won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance
- 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
