A biography for Hilary Hahnhasn’t been written yet.
“I remember when I gave my first recital. I thought, 'Oh, my goodness, people are coming to hear me.' I didn't expect anyone to come, and then the whole hall filled up. Of course, it wasn't a big hall, and some of the people were my friends and family.”
“Through the Internet and technology, anyone can now seek out any artist, composer or undefined niche of music they find interesting. All on their own, without even having to stand up or go anywhere.”
“I never felt like a prodigy. For one thing, the root of the word is rather monstrous, literally. I never really felt like a monster or anything abnormal, because I always had a lot of different interests. But kids tend to focus on one thing, and for me it was violin.”
“Phrasing is the idea of finding sentences and using punctuation in speech. I often look at the score to see what's written in by the composer to see if I can find clues to those directions, like what direction did the composer have in mind, and I try to incorporate those things as much as possible.”
“If you think about it - if you watch a gymnast compete, you don't see their training behind the scenes. You just see the competition. You see the final result when it's polished. And that is very much what people experience with concerts. They go to the concert. And they see the final version.”
“You don't have any days to spare if you want to improve!”
“I don't think there's such a difference between older and newer music as there is between one composer and another.”
“Something new has the chance to speak to someone immediately. There isn't this expectation of what they're about to hear, so people can be really captivated, really quickly.”
“I get to work with a lot of great musicians - many I wouldn't have expected to work with - and see how they form their lives around their music and how they approach it.”
“It's no good to do a piece once and then move on because it doesn't have time to develop. I try to play seven or eight concerti in a season, and generally one or two of those are new for me.”
“Most kids are very seriously interested in something - friends, math, shopping, sports. For me it happened to be music and the violin. I had the chance to pursue it without having it get in the way of my life.”
“The audience will find the artist who matches their interests. If you're not being true to yourself, your audience can't find you, because there's a wall up between who you are and who they're seeing.”
“As a professional, you pick up ideas from your colleagues and the orchestras you work with, while coming up with mutual interpretations in very short periods of time.”
“In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.”
“In music you can find your own niche. You can do what you want to do. There is really no job description. You have to find your own way, and that's fun.”
“I've been to New Zealand several times.”
“When you have live music in the background, people are usually talking over it. You don't actually get to listen to live music in your space all the time.”
“I think when a teacher says that you're ready for something, it means you're ready to learn it. It doesn't always mean that you are completely capable of doing everything that's inside the piece.”
“Edgar Meyer's violin concerto was the first piece of contemporary music I worked on in any depth. I was 18 or 19.”
“If my career doesn't work out as a violinist, I want to become an archaeologist. I've read about paleontology, too - that's dinosaur bones - but I thought it would be more interesting to do archaeology.”