Hilary Hahn

The American violinist Hilary Hahn was born in Virginia in 1979 and began studying the violin at just under four years of age, using the Suzuki method. She entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at ten, where she studied with Jascha Brodsky; after his death, she continued with Jaime Laredo and also took chamber music classes with Gary Graffman. Hahn made her orchestral debut in 1991 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Within a few years she was performing with all of the major orchestras in the United States; at her German debut in 1995 with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Lorin Maazel, critics hailed her as a “talent of the century.” Hilary Hahn has served as artist-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic and as visiting artist at the Juilliard School in New York. Her repertoire ranges from Bach to the present day, and she has commissioned more than 40 new works, including 27 pieces for her Grammy Award-winning album In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores. She has released 23 recordings on the Decca, Sony Classical, and Deutsche Grammophon labels, many of which have received major awards. Hahn places particular emphasis on connecting with audiences: she regularly takes time to sign autographs and for more than 20 years has collected artworks created by her fans. Her series “Bring Your Own Baby” presents concerts designed for parents and young children, and her social media initiative “#100daysofpractice” offers a program encouraging daily practice; since she launched the hashtag in 2017, more than a million posts by musicians have appeared. Hahn has received the Avery Fisher Prize, the Karajan Prize of the Salzburg Easter Festival, and Dresden Music Festival’s Glashütte Prize, whose prize money she donated to the educational organization Project 440. In 2020 she delivered the keynote address at the second Annual Women in Classical Music Symposium, and the magazine Musical America named her Artist of the Year in 2023.

March 2026