Hilary Hahn

Hilary Hahn melds expressive musicality and technical expertise with a diverse repertoire guided by artistic curiosity. Her new role with the Juilliard School follows her earlier tenure as visiting artist in the Music Division in the 2023–24 season; she has also recently served as visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music, the 2022 Chubb Fellow at Yale University’s Timothy Dwight College, and artist-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.

Hahn is known for performing music ranging from solo Bach and the classical repertoire to today’s major composers; she has personally championed works by more than 40 living composers, with recent commissions from Michael Abels, Barbara Assiganaak, Steven Banks, Jennifer Higdon, and Carlos Simon. Her project In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores featured newly commissioned encores from 27 composers, many of whom have continued to write for Hahn in the ensuing years. Among them were Einojuhani Rautavaara and Antón García Abril, whose respective works Deux Sérénades and 6 Partitas have appeared on recordings by Hahn.

Hahn’s wide performance repertoire is reflected in her 23 feature recordings, which have all opened in the top 10 of the Billboard charts. Recent releases include Night After Night, a collection of James Newton Howard’s scores for the films of M. Night Shyamalan, and a Gramophone Award-winning 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—have earned Grammys.

Beyond the classroom and the concert hall, Hahn’s social media-based initiative #100daysofpractice, launched in 2017, has transformed practice into a community-building celebration of artistic development with nearly one million posts across platforms. 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, which includes her own fingerings and bowings and performance notes for each work.

Hahn studied at the Curtis Institute of Music; she also holds honorary doctorates from Middlebury College and Ball State University. In recent seasons, Hahn has received the Avery Fisher Prize, was named Musical America’s Artist of the Year, and received the Herbert von Karajan and Glasshütte Original Music Festival awards, the latter of which she donated to the Philadelphia music education nonprofit Project 440.