Hilary Hahn - Musical Career

Musical Career

In 1996 when she was sixteen years old, Sony Music signed Hahn to an exclusive recording contract. After Hahn completed her part of the contract with Sony, which was for five recordings over six years, she decided against renewing the contract as she and Sony did not agree on her future projects. Instead, Hahn signed with Deutsche Grammophon in 2003 after her contract with Sony expired in the year before.

Hahn has played with orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. She debuted with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in March 2007, and played in Vatican City as part of the celebrations for Pope Benedict XVI together with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Gustavo Dudamel, also in 2007.

She began performing and touring in a crossover duo with singer-songwriter Josh Ritter in 2007 and with singer-songwriter Tom Brosseau in 2005. According to Hahn, "Other musicians cross genres all the time. For me it's not crossover—I just enter their world. It frees you up to think in a different way from what you've been trained to do."

In addition to being a solo violinist, Hahn has also performed as a chamber musician. Since the summer of 1992 she has performed nearly every year with the Skaneateles Chamber Music Festival in Skaneateles, New York. Between 1995 and 2000 she performed and studied chamber music at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, and in 1996 she served as an artist and a member of the chamber music mentoring program of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

In an 1999 interview with Strings Magazine, Hahn cited people influential on her development as a musician and a student, including David Zinman, the conductor of the Baltimore Symphony, and Hahn's mentor since she was ten, Lorin Maazel, with whom she worked in Europe with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Hahn sometimes feels that classical-music admirers "make it hard for people who are just coming in. I think that if people show up in jeans and chains, it's great that all parts of culture are interested in music. People forget sometimes that it's about the music, not how you act and dress."

During concerts she does hope for absolute quiet from the audience during the music. "Not out of snobbishness or holy respect for the music, but just so everyone (including the performers) can hear it. Great music can be quite comfortable and relaxing, and you can sleep—as long as you don't snore."

On January 14, 2010, Hahn appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien in support of her album, Bach: Violin & Voice. Shortly thereafter the album sold 1,000 copies, reaching #1 on a Billboard classical chart, officially peaking at #6 on the Billboard Classical Albums chart.