Biography
Hilary Hahn (born November 27, 1979 in Lexington, Virginia) is an American Grammy Award–winning violinist.
Hahn began playing the violin one month before her fourth birthday in the Suzuki Program of Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory (Sony Bio). She participated in a Suzuki class for about a year. Between 1984 and 1989 Hahn studied in Baltimore under the direction of Klara Berkovich. In 1990, at the age of twelve, Hahn was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where she became a student of Jascha Brodsky. Hahn studied with Brodsky for seven years and learned the etudes of Kreutzer, Ševčík, Gaviniès, Rode, as well as the Paganini Caprices. She also learned about twenty-eight violin concertos, recital programs, and several other short pieces (Zaustinsky 1999).
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In 1991, Hahn made her first 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. In 1995 Hahn made her international debut in Germany with a performance of the Beethoven Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major with Lorin Maazel and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The concert was broadcast on radio and television throughout Europe. A year later, Hahn debuted at Carnegie Hall in New York as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
By the age of sixteen, Hahn had completed the Curtis Institute's university requirements, but elected to remain at the Institute for several more years to pursue additional elective courses, until her graduation in May of 1999 with a Bachelor Of Music degree. During this time she regularly coached violin with Jaime Laredo, and studied chamber music with Felix Galimir and Gary Graffman. In an interview with PBS in December 2001, Hahn stated that of all the musical disciplines, she is most interested in musical performance (PBS Interview).
Hahn has played with orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, just to name a few. She debuted with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in March of 2007. In the future, Hahn and Chris Thile plan to make a collaboration album.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.