Biography

Three-time Grammy Award–winning violinist Hilary Hahn is a prolific recording artist and commissioner of new works whose 22 recordings have received every critical prize in the international press. Since 2017 her Instagram practice initiative, #100daysofpractice, has helped to transform practicing into a community-oriented celebration of artistic development. Currently artist in residence at the Chicago Symphony and London’s Wigmore Hall, she is co-founder and vice president of artistic partnerships of the AI-music initiative Deepmusic.AI with Carol Reiley. Ms. Hahn made her San Francisco Symphony debut in October 1999 as a Shenson Young Artist.

A strong advocate for new music, Ms. Hahn has championed and commissioned works by a diverse array of contemporary composers. Her 2021 album Paris features the world premiere recording of Deux Sérénades, a piece written for Ms. Hahn and completed posthumously by Kalevi Aho, which Ms. Hahn premiered in 2019. Other recent commissions include Michael Abels’s Isolation Variation, the recording of which has been nominated for a Grammy Award; Barbara Assiginaak’s Sphinx Moth; Lera Auerbach’s Sonata No. 4: Fractured Dreams; and Six Partitas by Antón García Abril, a recording of which was released in 2019.
Ms. Hahn’s most recent recording, 2022’s Eclipse, features pieces by Dvořák, Ginastera, and Sarasate. A former Suzuki student, she released new recordings of the first three books of the Suzuki Violin School in 2020, in partnership with the International Suzuki Association and Alfred Music.

The recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, Ms. Hahn received the Herbert von Karajan award in 2021 and delivered the keynote speech of the Second Annual Women in Classical Music Symposium the same year. In 2023 she was named Musical America’s Artist of the Year. 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.

March 2023