Hilary Hahn

Hilary Hahn was born on November 27, 1979, in Lexington, Virginia, and grew up in the Baltimore, Maryland, area. At the age of three, she began playing the violin through the Suzuki Program at Baltimore’s Peabody Institute. From 1985 to 1990, she studied with Klara Berkovich. In 1990, at ten years old, Hahn was accepted into the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she continued her studies for seven years with Jascha Brodsky. She completed the university requirements at 16 but remained at the institute for an additional three years, graduating in May 1999 with a Bachelor of Music degree. During this time, she studied violin with Jaime Laredo and chamber music with Felix Galimir and Gary Graffman. Her early education also included four summers in language immersion programs in German, French, and Japanese at Middlebury College.

Hahn made her orchestral debut at age 12 on December 21, 1991, with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. This was followed by performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. Her international debut came in 1994, performing the Bernstein Serenade in Hungary with Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. In 1995, she made her German debut with the Beethoven Violin Concerto alongside Lorin Maazel and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, a performance broadcast across Europe. In 1996, Hahn debuted at Carnegie Hall with the Philadelphia Orchestra, playing Saint-Saens’s third violin concerto. She began her recording career in 1996 and has since released 16 albums on Deutsche Grammophon and Sony labels, earning three Grammy Awards. Her albums frequently pair new compositions with traditional works, such as Beethoven with Bernstein or Schoenberg with Sibelius. She also appeared on “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” in 2000.

Hilary Hahn actively champions contemporary classical music, commissioning works from various composers. Notable commissions include concerti from Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon, partitas by Antón García Abril, serenades from Einojuhani Rautavaara, and a violin and piano sonata by Lera Auerbach. Her 2010 recording of Jennifer Higdon’s Violin Concerto, written for her, contributed to Higdon winning the Pulitzer Prize in Music. In 2013, her album “In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores”–a project involving 26 commissioned contemporary composers–won a Grammy Award. She also engages in cross-genre collaborations, performing with artists like Josh Ritter and Tom Brosseau, and joined the band “…And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead” on recordings. In 2012, she released “Silfra,” an improvised album with German pianist Hauschka. Since 2016, Hahn has also initiated free community concerts in various settings like knitting circles and yoga classes, aiming to make classical music accessible to diverse audiences, including parents with infants. In 2020, she co-founded DeepMusic.ai with Carol E. Reiley to explore the intersection of art and AI. In January 2024, she received the Avery Fisher Prize.