Hilary Hahn

Three-time Grammy Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn melds expressive musicality and technical expertise with a diverse repertoire guided by artistic curiosity. Her barrier-breaking attitude toward classical music and her commitment to sharing her experiences with a global community have made her a fan favorite. Hahn is a prolific recording artist; her 23 feature recordings have received every critical prize in the international press. She is currently in the midst of her third year as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first-ever artist-in-residence, and is artist-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic, visiting artist at the Juilliard School, and curating artist of the Dortmund Festival.

Hahn is a frequent commissioner and performer of works by living composers; her 2023–24 repertoire included several new and recent works by Barbara Assiginaak, Steven Banks, Jennifer Higdon, Jessie Montgomery, and Carlos Simon, among others. Hahn performed these alongside compositions by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Brahms, Prokofiev, Korngold, Ginastera, Sarasate, Barber, and Copland in concerts with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Colombian Youth Orchestra, the Israel, Los Angeles, and New York philharmonics, and the Chicago, National, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Swedish Radio symphony orchestras.

In addition to her orchestral appearances, Hahn gave several solo recitals and small-ensemble performances in the 2023-24 season. Beginning in September in Athens, GA, Hahn performed three solo Bach recitals. Other dates included an October performance in Kansas City, where she opened the 2023–24 Harriman-Jewell Series, and a March recital in New York as part of her residency with the New York Philharmonic. As curating artist of the Dortmund Festival, Hahn performed a duo recital with organist Iveta Apkalna, joined cellist Seth Parker Woods in a recital program, and performed contemporary American repertoire with London’s Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective. She performed Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra; led one of her signature Bring Your Own Baby concerts; and hosted a master class for violinists of all levels.

A strong advocate for new music, Hahn has championed works by a diverse array of contemporary composers, and has personally commissioned more than 40 composers to write works in a wide range of formats. Her 2021 recording Paris features the world premiere recording of Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Deux Sérénades, a piece written for Hahn which she premiered in 2019. Other recent commissions include Michael Abels’s Isolation Variation, Hahn’s recording of which was nominated for a Grammy; Barbara Assiginaak’s Sphynx Moth; Lera Auerbach’s Sonata No. 4: Fractured Dreams; and 6 Partitas by Antón García Abril. García Abril, Auerbach, and Rautavaara had previously written music for In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores, Hahn’s Grammy Award-winning multi-year commissioning project.

Hahn has related to her fans naturally from the very beginning of her career. She has committed to autograph signings after nearly every concert and maintains and shares a collection of the fan art she has received over the course of 20 years. Her Bring Your Own Baby concerts create opportunities for parents to share their enjoyment of live classical music with their children in a nurturing, welcoming environment. Hahn’s commitment to her fans extends to a long history of educational outreach. Her social media-based practice initiative, #100daysofpractice, has transformed practice into a community-building celebration of artistic development; since Hahn created the hashtag in 2017, fellow performers and students have contributed nearly one million posts. A former Suzuki student, she released new recordings of the first three books of the Suzuki Violin School in 2020. In 2019, she released a book of sheet music for In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores, which includes her own fingerings, bowings, performance notes for each work.

Hahn is a prolific and celebrated recording artist whose feature albums on Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, and Sony have all charted in the top 10 on Billboard. Her most recent album celebrates her artistic lineage with a recording of Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas for solo violin. Three of Hahn’s albums — her 2003 Brahms and Stravinsky concerto disc, a 2008 pairing of Schoenberg and Sibelius concerti, and her 2013 recording of In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores — have all won Grammys. Jennifer Higdon’s Violin Concerto, which was composed for Hahn and which she recorded in 2008, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Hahn is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions. In recent seasons, she was named Musical America’s artist of the year for 2023; delivered the keynote speech of the second annual Women in Classical Music Symposium; received the 2021 Herbert von Karajan Award; and was awarded the 11th annual Glasshütte Original Music Festival Award, which she donated to the Philadelphia-based music education nonprofit Project 440. Hahn was the 2022 Chubb Fellow at Yale University’s Timothy Dwight College; she also holds honorary doctorates from Middlebury College — where she spent four summers in the total-immersion German, French, and Japanese language programs — and Ball State University, where there are three scholarships in her name.